



A lot of prerelease gossip has attended this plonkingly slow and clonkingly laborious wartime thriller starring Brad Pitt as dashing Canadian airman Max Vatan and Marion Cotillard as Marianne Beausejour, the lissom French spy with whom he falls in love. As Pitt’s marriage collapsed in the real world, social media buzzed impertinently about the Allied stars’ relationship. But in this film, there is no chemistry, no romantic fusion, no Bradion, no Mariobrad. Their screen passion bursts forth like a cold wet teabag falling out of a mug that you have upended over the kitchen sink and don’t much feel like washing up. Their rapport fizzes like a quarter-inch of bin juice left after you have taken the rubbish out.

And what can that mean? Oscar Wilde’s tragic actress Sybil Vane said that actually falling in love had destroyed her ability to create the artifice of love on stage; she says it is “why I shall always be bad. Why I shall never act well again.” Can that apply to Pitt and Cotillard? In Allied, they seem to interact like thesp robots from Westworld with some kind of Google Translate chip implanted in their heads. Director Robert Zemeckis is usually known for his zestiness and zippiness; but this is arduous. Screenwriter Steven Knight scripted smart movies such as Locke, Dirty Pretty Things and Eastern Promises, and there are some nice touches, but it resembles an unconvincing and sluggish pastiche of a war movie.

The action begins in Casablanca, 1942, with locations and dialogue scenes that might be intended to recall the great Bergman/Bogart movie. There is even a moment in a cafe where we really needed a pickpocket to show up warning of “Vultures! Vultures!” Super-daring Max has parachuted down into the deserts of Morocco; his contact has brought him into the city where he makes contact with vivacious, cigarette-smoking Marianne; she has told her friends he is her new husband, a mining engineer. The German ambassador is preparing to host a party that evening, and Max and Marianne need invitations: they have a daring mission to execute.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Max and Marianne get married, live in leafy Highgate and have a child. Photograph: Allstar/Paramount Pictures

Weirdly, Max is intending to pass himself off as a native French speaker, and Marianne seems more or less relaxed about this imposture, even though his French accent is clearly appalling. She keeps derisively calling him “Québécois”, even though Max keeps telling her he is not from Francophone Canada. Max’s French is not fooling anyone. If his character’s Canadian identity is just a way of getting an American-sounding Hollywood star to play a character working for the British, then this is another layer of baffling and cumbersome plot exposition.

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Their plan is carried out, but it is the most suspense-free and unthrilling action setpiece I can remember seeing. It could almost have been a dream sequence. Well, an earlier scene does at least deliver a punch, in which Max suspects that a top-ranking Nazi sitting at the next cafe table has “made” him, and therefore follows this German into a dark corridor with murder in mind.

Back in blitz-hit London, Max and Marianne get married, live in leafy Highgate and have a child. But then Max’s commanding officer, Frank Heslop (Jared Harris), sorrowingly informs him he must attend a special meeting with a hatchet-faced military intelligence chief, played by Simon McBurney. This officer curtly informs Max that Marianne is suspected of being a Nazi spy in deep cover. If their suspicions are correct, Max will have to take action “with his own hand”. Is the “own-hand” part really necessary and historically accurate? It seems sadistic and inefficient to me.

At this stage, Allied could have – and almost does – summon up a bit of intimate suspense, some Hitchcockian suspicion, and Knight does in fact unveil an interesting further twist: another level of potential bad faith. But this isn’t resolved very satisfyingly and the final big reveal feels anti-climactic, with unanswered questions concerning Marianne.

It seems like tourist cinema: a tourist visit to the heritage-wartime past, with Max and Marianne looking like uncomfortable tourists in each other’s languages and in each other’s lives. Despite being married, they always look like strangers; the stars look as if they are intent on squashing rumours by behaving as if they have just emerged from their trailers and have yet to be introduced.