Allied

(warning: contains spoilers for Allied)

I pondered many things when I watched Allied.  I doubt any of them were the thing that I was supposed to be pondering.  I now ponder whether that is a comment on the film itself...

Allied is a spy romance/thriller directed by Robert Zemekis (Back to the Future, Castaway, Forrest Gump) and starring Brad Pitt (Se7en, Fight Club) and Marion Cotillard (Inception, The Dark Knight Rises).  During World War 2, Max Vatan (Pitt) gets a secret spy assignment to infiltrate a party and kill some bad guys.  His "wife" for the purposes of this operation is Marianne Beausejour (Cotillard).  Her main role is to make their "relationship" looks convincing.  Later in the film, Vatan is told that there is intelligence that suggests that Beausejour is a double agent, passing secrets to the enemy.  He now has to work out if she is, and (if she is) kill her.  Can you really have a healthy relationship when you know that you and your partner are professional liars?

Ooh.  Well, that's very exciting.

Well, it's not really.  It's perfectly fine, but it lacks a bit of...something.  I'm not sure what it is.  All the ingredients add up very well, but the end product isn't quite right for some reason.  It's very odd, because the component parts seem spot on.  Let's break this down a little...

The plot is great - read that second paragraph again and tell me it's not intriguing.  You can't, can you?  And there's something very pleasing to me that the plot can be described so succinctly.  It tends to be the sign of a good film if you can describe it in about 100 words.  Bam - everyone knows where they stand and off we go...

The stakes are clearly set out.  The viewer knows what's going on, and why it matters.  I am particularly fond of this.  My main criticism of bigger blockbusters (particularly action packed ones) is that main characters go to a place and do a thing for tenuous reasons like "because the script made me do it".  With Allied, I knew what everyone was doing and why at all times.  That's pleasing.

There's some sneaky social issues there without it being "An Issue".  Vatan is aware that some of his compatriots are lesbians.  It's barely mentioned.  This pleases me.  Why?  Because it's normalised.  It's just not an issue.  This is a greatly encouraging sign for alternative sexualities in films.  Not that named characters are labelled as "the gay ones", but that there are named characters who happens to be gay.  Short of a guarded "ssh - be careful you don't get found out" (because this was still a court-martial-able offence in 1942), it's not a major plot line.

The set pieces - there are one or two stand out pieces which really elevate this film.  Namely, the assassination mission (which is slickly executed - ha, pun - which feels like it's been directly lifted from a Tarantino movie) and the party in the Blitz (where an airplane crashes into a house).  Both pieces are visually impressive and well choreographed.

The tension.  Zemekis does a great job of taking a small everyday noises (particularly ticking clocks), fading out all the ambient noise and bringing that one noise (ticking) to the fore.  It's very effective.  And the central questions - is she a spy?  And if she is, will he kill her? - are ones that kept me guessing until the end of the film.  I was interested in the answers to those questions, so the film must have had something going for it.

Which leads me to my ponderings.

1.  Is "chemistry" between actors an actual thing? 

Not that chemistry

I have read interviews with actors who swear that it is, and other interviews where actors say that acting is just pretending so you can pretend to get on with someone.  I ask this question because a lot of reviews have claimed there is no chemistry between Cotillard and Pitt, and others have taken this a step further and claimed it as proof that Cotillard was the reason that Pitt's marriage to Angelina Jolie ended.  I couldn't tell either ways.  I found Cotillard very compelling.  There was a certain clunkiness to the relationship, but given that it was an artifice (and this is what the film was about), isn't that to be expected?

2.  Is Brad Pitt a good actor?  I can't decide.  Every so often, he has a stand out part in a stand out film (Se7en, Fight Club) but outside of that, he seems like Brad Pitt playing Brad Pitt.  Also, for those of you playing the "will Brad Pitt eat food in this film" drinking game, make sure you line your stomachs before viewing.

3.  My test: if, partway through this film, the film stopped working (for whatever reason) and I was given a ticket to come and see this film again for free, would I use the ticket? 
The answer is yes.  I wanted to see how this story played out.  But it just lacked a certain something - a bit of zip, a bit of flourish.  A certain something unhelpfully untangible.