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Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.

In the midst of WWII, Charlotte Gray (Cate Blanchett) falls for dashing pilot Peter Gregory. She is recruited into the secret service since she spent time in France and is fluent. When Peter is lost behind the lines, she pushes to get the courier job for the French Resistance. Only she has the ulterior motive to find her missing love. Once on french soil, she finds french communist fighter Julien Levade (Billy Crudup).This is an utterly old fashion melodrama. That has less to do with the setting or time period. It has more to do with the style and the subject matter. The romance has no time to develop and has a very superficial manufactured old romance novel feel. Other than a pretty face, there is nothing to justify the grand romance being depicted. It would probably be more compelling to have this about a family member. Cate Blanchett is a truly wonderful actress, and any positives from this movie are all due to her. There is a sense of danger but it doesn't persist. Director Gillian Armstrong has made a beautiful movie. It just doesn't have better passion or excitement.

Cate Blanchett is "Charlotte Gray" in this 2001 film directed by Gillian Armstrong and also starring Billy Crudup and Michael Gambon.Charlotte Gray is a young Scottish woman who is recruited during World War II, due to her fluency in French, to work for the French resistance during Nazi occupation. Initially, she goes in the hope of locating her boyfriend (Rupert Perry-Jones), a pilot who was shot down. But she quickly becomes involved in her work. She takes on the identity, after her cover is nearly blown, of a housekeeper in a huge farm house owned by Monsieur Levade (Gambon) and caring for two little Jewish boys hiding there since their parents have been arrested. Levade's son (Crudup) is a Communist on the outs with his father. Gray soon realizes that there are collaborators everywhere, and no one is certain whom they can trust.Though I have some problems with the plot of this movie, it is a very moving and emotional story, exquisitely photographed and acted. Cate Blanchett is luminous, and her portrayal of Charlotte is magnificent, as is her accent. Gambon turns in another excellent performance, and Billy Crudup gives a very intense portrayal of Julien, his son.My problems with the plot include Charlotte's reasons for going to France. She was told that she would be excellent working there because of her fluency in French. Couldn't she have gone because she wanted to help the war effort? It seems flimsy for her to assume that after all of her training and the time that had passed, that she would be able to locate the pilot, if he even was still alive.The other problem I have is the incident in the café with her contact. Her contact knows that she was followed by Nazis, and the Nazi soldiers are on their way into the café, yet she has Charlotte pass her what looks like fuses or valves. Why? The third problem I have is Julien screaming insults at the Nazis. I don't understand why he would do that unless he wanted to be killed. That he wasn't is also strange.Despite all of this, the emotions depicted in this film are real, and the characters seem real as well. The atmosphere is tense - one gets the impression that no one sleeps well, and everyone is under suspicion. One does get an idea of what it was like for the French to live as they had to during the war, surrounded by collaborators and Nazis.This is a case where the script isn't 100% but because of the directing, acting, and production values, it still comes together as a gripping and poignant drama.

Gillian Armstrong's French Resistance drama, inspired by the exploits of a number of women trained by the Special Operations Executive and dropped into France, has a regal, hyperbolic extroversion throughout it. Because Armstrong's sense of reality is allowed to indulge in her fairy-tale expectations, we are directly extricated into the period, thanks to cinematographer Dion Beebe's virtually glowing compositions and Joseph Bennett's discreet, intensely considered production design.Although the French characters all communicate in English, director Armstrong boasts glorious, cinematic instants out of everyone, including the lively, neighborly Michael Gambon as the Crudup character's more or less alienated father. And while the story dives into such agitating subjects as Vichy France and the sadistic elimination of Jewish children, Armstrong never loses focus of the romance at the core of all this.Cate Blanchett, whose energetic panache puts the infinite in finite, takes hold of this movie with a steadfastly ambitious energy. Powerfully enduring in her love for a strapping paratrooper at first, she becomes more independent as the war's toll takes. But as she grows stronger, she also develops a wiser characterization of love. And her enlargement into something of a virtuous vindicator a la Pearl Cornioley, Nancy Wake, Odette Sansom and Violette Szabo is the movie's intriguing psychoemotional core. However, that is not to say that Billy Crudup is disallowed from being a badass, which he is, in a performance as a Resistance fighter who, we think owing to Crudup, could've been a romantic traveller were it not for the war, with an eye for harmony, a love of beauty, yet now he is vindicating his ideals.

The story of Charlotte Gray is based upon the real life exploits of New Zealand heroine Nancy Wake, the most decorated Allied woman of WW2. Compared with Nancy's exploits, it is said that "Charlotte Gray" is an Enid Blyton story.The Nazis called Nancy "the White Mouse" and she was number 1 on the Gestapo's wanted list in France. Nancy was also later became the leader of 7000 French Resistance fighters who took on 22,000 German troops. She led a small group who stormed the Gestapo headquarters and she personally killed the German sentries with karate chops. She also rode a bicycle 700 km to deliver an urgent dispatch.The acting of Cate Blachett in this movie is excellent as usual. The period setting is also very good. It is a pity that American audiences did not like this film. It is time for some of them to grow up and recognize that the whole world doesn't revolve around American people.