One year after his latest feature film The Walk was released, Robert Zemeckis, who is best-known as the director of the Back to the Future saga and of Forrest Gump, got back behind the camera to direct Allied. Unfortunately, this thriller seems to be a little bit too long and to rely more on the glamour of its cast than on its screenplay.
© Paramount Pictures
Allied was undoubtedly one of the most anticipated movies of the year and it seemed actually very promising. The great American filmmaker Robert Zemeckis directs Marion Cotillard and Brad Pitt, who respectively play Marianne Beauséjour, a French resistant fighter, and Max Vatan, a Canadian spy, who fall in love during the Second World War, when they are both sent to Casablanca to kill a high-ranking Nazi official. But, after they get married, Max discovers that some people accuse Marianne of being, in fact, a German spy. So, he decides to investigate in order to try and find out the truth about his wife.
Nevertheless, the movie is rather disappointing. Even though the plotline creates some suspense and maintains it until the end, the scenario dwells too much on some pretty useless details. For instance, the homosexuality of the hero’s sister is highlighted several times but Robert Zemeckis never really seems to take a stand on the matter.
Moreover, the director is inspired by some of the most famous and classical movies and tries to provide his film with a vintage aspect. In order to do so, he uses beautiful costumes, props and settings that efficiently and beautifully recreate the peculiar atmosphere of the 40s but, unfortunately, he also adopts the same slow rhythm that is characteristic of old peplums. So, he multiplies the long scenes with only little action in order to focus on the relationships between the characters. This creates the impression that the whole movie is extremely slow and sometimes makes the spectators forget the suspense of the story. Conversely, the end seems rather brutal and leaves many questions unanswered; as if the director were running out of time and hastily finished his film.
So, if the movie is good, it is mainly thanks to the acting of Marion Cotillard and Brad Pitt who show, once again, that they are individually extremely talented. Yet, unfortunately, magic obviously did not work since they apparently did not manage to show any chemistry on screen. So, whereas its poster made us expect a masterpiece, we are pretty disappointed to find out that Allied is actually an average film.
Allied, Robert Zemeckis, USA, 2016, 2h05, released in the United States of America and in France on the 23rd of November 2016 and in Lebanon on the 24th of November 2016.