Quartile rating: 6.5/10 · 1 rating
An American journalist arrives in Berlin just after the end of World War Two. He becomes involved in a murder mystery surrounding a dead GI who washes up at a lakeside mansion during the Potsdam negotiations between the Allied powers. Soon his investigation connects with his search for his married pre-war German lover.
Soderbergh's stylistic experiment in shooting with 1940s-era techniques (vintage lenses, on-set sound, hard lighting) is genuinely impressive and earns high marks for cinematography, evoking classic noir and wartime melodrama with real commitment. The novelty is moderate — the noir homage concept is interesting but not wholly singular, and the execution leans heavily on Casablanca comparisons. The plot is convoluted and ultimately unsatisfying, struggling to make its conspiracy and romantic threads cohere with genuine tension. The acting is competent — Clooney is suitably stoic, Blanchett works hard — but the performances feel constrained by the period affectation rather than liberated by it. The ending deflates rather than delivers, resolving the mystery without the emotional or moral punch the setup promises.