★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆

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. In complete antithesis to the opening of–a single feather tumbling lightly through the air, enhanced by the subtlest of cutting-edge effects – the first shot of Robert Zemeckis’ new film,, 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.





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?” 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 (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.



