★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆
In complete antithesis to the opening of Forrest Gump –a single feather tumbling
lightly through the air, enhanced by the subtlest of cutting-edge effects – the
first shot of Robert Zemeckis’ new film, Allied,
indicates a venture doomed from the start. Canadian intelligence officer Max
Vatan (Brad Pitt) is airdropped into the Moroccan desert; CG sand billows and
warps, the parachute ripples with artifice, and you can almost see the transition
between computer-built puppet and physical actor.
Such obvious and cheap-looking visual additions hamper much
of this tepid World War 2 thriller, which sees Pitt and Marion Cotillard (playing fictional
French resistance badass Marianne Beausejour) working undercover as an affluent
husband and wife, before genuinely falling in love. Loyalties are later tested
when commanding officer Heslop (a bristling, brusque Jared Harris) reveals that
Vatan’s wife and mother of his child may, in fact, have ulterior motives.
We begin in Casablanca (never a good location to reference
in post-war cinema, for obvious reasons), where – despite the odd clumsy line –
the setup is all rather enticing, and an early sequence of two-versus-twenty
machine gun action is fantastically punchy. The period detail is, of course,
perfect, because this is Robert Zemeckis, and nothing escapes his eye. Well,
besides the fact his leads have precisely zero chemistry. God bless Marion
Cotillard for staying the distance, because she is utterly captivating; believable,
yet with those classical Hollywood idiosyncrasies that make a tiny voice in
your head remind you that it’s all for show. Plus, let’s be honest; no-one else
could saunter about in a selection of 1940s silk nightgowns with quite as much
panache.
One might be persuaded that this is what happens when two of
the world’s most glamorous stars are made to play characters already play-acting
themselves: the detachment from reality is increased two-fold, and investment
is rendered near-impossible. I hope to dissuade you of this notion, because any
lack of connection is entirely the fault of our leading man. Brad Pitt (the Brad Pitt!) is astonishingly,
demand-a-refund, write-home-to-your-mother poor. He spends the first hour with
a look that says “I need to bring up phlegm but people keep talking to me”.
Then, in the second, his stricken face betrays not “What if my wife’s a Nazi?”,
nor “Will I lose my child?”, but “If I farted, would anyone notice?”
Digital airbrushing and having to perform alongside a
completely magnetic Cotillard at all times is a cruel combination, but that’s
really no excuse for such a brick wall of charisma. Sex scenes between the two may
confuse viewers, who’ll find themselves concerned over Marianne’s fruitless attempts
to untangle herself from a particularly unresponsive deck chair…and why it’s
got a side parting. The most eagle-eyed, frothy-mouthed tabloid editor looking
for signs of a steamy affair between the two leads could not find so much as a
mild breeze here.
Add some tip-top British thespians filling the air with
polite menace (Harris, with Simon McBurney in close succession), and suddenly,
Pitt has no allies at all, stranded in the desolation of Steven Knight’s
ungainly script. Knight’s unpredictable levels of quality continue to zig-zag, with
Allied falling somewhere between
disappointing and mediocre. There’s no sign of the quiet brilliance exuded by Locke, but an unhealthy helping of Seventh Son’s slap-on-the-back misogyny. “Who are you
thinking about?” Vatan asks a young British pilot, hours before the terrified
boy is sent to almost certain death. “My mother, Sir” he replies. “Don’t.”
murmurs a stale-faced Pitt, “Think of your father. He’s proud of you”. You
what, mate?
