Two spies, posing as husband and wife, in the heat of intense foreign affairs. They’re both hot. They’re both cunning. They’re both committed — maybe.

It’s not “Mr. & Mrs. Smith,” but “Allied” does include star Brad Pitt and multiple sex scenes. And while this story does seem a little familiar, “Allied” delivered — for the most part — a thrilling, romantic and ultimately foreboding tale of trust and betrayal. Employing excellent camerawork and great acting from the two lead roles, “Allied” is a blast from the past when it comes to style and mood.

Taking place during World War II, Brad Pitt and Marion Cotillard star as Max Vatan and Marianne Beausejour, a Canadian intelligence officer and a French residence fighter, respectively. In the early years of the North Africa campaign, Vatan airdrops into Casablanca, Morocco, instructed to pair up with Marianne. Acting as a married couple from Paris, they successfully assassinate a German ambassador, narrowly escaping their almost suicidal mission.

Throughout their complicated facade, and against their original intentions, the two fall in love, eventually fleeing Morocco and settling in London. Throughout the next year, Vatan struggles with a rising suspicion of his wife’s involvement with German intelligence, desperately stretching to great lengths to prove his wife innocent, while unable to confide in her despite the birth of their daughter. Under pressure from his superior officers, Vatan can only trust himself in pursuit of the truth.

Forewarning: Brad Pitt’s French accent is pretty bad in this movie. Here’s a tip: Get over it. Both characters notably mock his poor tongue, which should be enough to stifle any serious complaints about his prevailing southern drawl.

I have to add that Marion Cotillard is timelessly beautiful in ”Allied.” Her elegance is accentuated by long, dark, open-backed dresses, her charm providing the audience with much of the film’s rich romantic dialogue.

While the romance between Max and Marianne burns bright, Max’s internal struggle with loyalty to both his country and his family ultimately drives the conflict within ”Allied,” serving as the main source of drama throughout the film. Max wages his own war with his career and civic duty, while combatting a dwindling faith in his beloved Marianne.

The ultimately equalizing war with the Germans plays second fiddle to his internal debate, but Zemeckis does a fantastic job placing air raids and background audio effects to accentuate the magnitude of the war. The enormousness of the violence above in juxtaposition to the minute but cruel reality in the Vatan home is a beautiful way of depicting how distrust in a marriage is a war in itself.

There’s something to be said for ambitious directors. It takes cojones to let actors walk in and out of shots, back the camera out to reveal a mirror shot, or slowly pan across a massive landscape. Robert Zemeckis did a lot with the camera in ”Allied,” and displayed great scope and applied skillful artistic angles to really put the audience in the 1940s backdrop. There are a few awesome long takes within ”Allied” that reminded me of something you’d see in Hitchcock or Fellini flicks, using space — or lack thereof — to create tension on screen.

Zemeckis deliberately took a more classical filmmaking approach to ”Allied,” trying to recapture nostalgic gold in both setting and shooting. The Casablancan romance to start the film, followed by a love that’s too good to be true? It felt exactly like ”Casablanca” at times in those early sequences. Even Pitt and Cotillard attempt to look a little less pretty in Allied, projecting a more less polished brand of themselves to depict a more realistic look at two lovers burdened by the violent conflict of war.

I will say I had a handful of grievances with “Allied.” There were more than a few times where I thought the mood shifted suddenly, or that a scene felt inconsistent with the rest of the film. These parts were choppy, casual, and at times painfully corny. One such moment came just before the credits, in which I audibly groaned and rolled my eyes.

With the exception of these few less-than-satisfactory moments, which probably equated to less than 10 minutes of screen time total, I found ”Allied” to be more than a war-love story, but an homage to the love-epic of the past. Kudos to you, Robert Zemeckis.

Published on November 30, 2016 at 9:55 pm