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Sick Product of a Sick System

hyped garbage

The story-telling is good with flashbacks.The film is both funny and heartbreaking. You smile in a scene and get a soulcrushing revelation in the next.

This is a very good movie where characters are crossed by different determinations. During the second world war, we used to see some key groups in interaction: Allies countries, Resistance groups and German troops. Most of the second war films present these groups with fixed roles and expected behaviors. This film screenplay keeps us hunting who are the traitor of dutch resistance. At the same time, the main actress plays a resistance's spy who fell in love by a German captain. Beyond that, a German lieutenant is a robbery scheme chief that steals the money and belongings of Jewish upper-class people who pays to leave Netherlands. The main characters are shaped in a complex way grabbing the attention til the end. In short, a clever second world war film.

Viewed at Rouen Nordic Film Festival 2007. The undisputed highlight of an otherwise routine week in Rouen was that "Basic Instinct" man, Paul Verhoeven's new Dutch film, "Zwartboek" or (the little) Black Book. After a 20 year Hollywood career during which the Dutch director came up with such megahits as "Robocop" and "Basic Instinct" Black Book marks his return to his native turf and native language. The story, co-written by Verhoeven, centers on a very attractive Jewish woman who is the sole survivor of a group of Jews attempting to escape from occupied Holland towards the end of the war in a boat. Posing as a gentile blonde under a non-Jewish name (her false papers furnished by the Underground) she becomes the mistress of a highly placed Gestapo officer and is given a job in Gestapo Headquarters from where she is able to pass critical information on to the resistance. However, one thing leads to another in this highly charged complex plot where everybody is double-crossing everybody else in a typically Verhoevenesque drama of interlocking paranoia. Eventually Miss De Vries's cover is blown and another ultimately sleazy Gestaponik succeeds in making it look like she is actually collaborating with the Krauts. In the end as the Americans arrive and the country is liberated she is being chased by both sides -- especially because she has come into possession of a little black book which gives facts, figures, and names of key people involved in the fake smuggling of Jews with big-big dividends. In a role which reads something like The Perils of Pauline in WW II our heroine (Carice van Houten) at one point has to gobble a whole chocolate bar to counteract a nearly fatal dose of insulin injected into her arm by a false Dutch "hero" of The Resistance.The plot is so complicated that it may take two viewings to sort it all out, but one thing which is perfectly clear -- (to invoke the words of an infamous ex-president) -- perfectly clear it is, that Carice van Houten, the heroine of the story, is, with this film, well on the way to installing herself as the next great international female Superstar. (Remember, you read it here first!) Ms. Van Houten, who is probably pushing thirty, has been around for a while and is currently the most popular actress in Holland -- which isn't saying much in terms of international recognition, but Little Black Book is on marquees almost everywhere so it seems to be only a matter of time before she is discovered by the outside world. Van Houten has a screen presence far more gripping than Sharon Stone, who became an overnight star as the heroine of Verhoeven's "Basic Instinct" circa 1991 and is a far better actress.If "Black Book", which is currently on wide release in the States, doesn't do it for her all Verhoeven needs to do to launch another (more high-powered) Sharon Stone, is to come out with "Basic Instinct III" with Van Houten in the lead and La Stone will be a forgotten melody. Carice van Houten has it all; charisma, good looks both enigmatic and down-to-earth, sex appeal to burn -- AND she can act! This may be ridiculously early to talk about Oscar 2008, but in my book she's already there.PS: Alas, Van Houten was never discovered by Hollywood -- their loss!

In 1956 Israel, Rachel Stein (Carice van Houten) remembers his war years in Holland starting in Sept 1944. When an allied bomber accidentally destroyed her hiding place, she tries to escape to liberated territories. The escaping Jews get caught and massacred but Rachel survives. She is rescued by the resistance and gets into dangerous operations. Eventually she infiltrates the Nazi world.Director Paul Verhoeven is bringing Nazis, Holocaust, and resistance fully into erotic violent pulp territories. It is unabashed in its noir thriller mentality. There is something oddly unreal about it. The last act has a few too many unnecessary twists, but it's nevertheless compelling and exciting.

This movie needs to be taken with huge grain of salt if you don't want to tear your hair out while watching it.I suppose it depends on what sort of expectations you have beforehand, but that can really always be used to defend a movie, as well as argue for differing viewer's experiences, much like the fact that many of us have varying tastes in movies. However, I think some things can be more or less objectively agreed upon by people who appreciate the art of film and cinema.The suspension of disbelief required for this movie to make any kind of lasting impression is MASSIVE. The script feels unfinished, almost as if the rough draft that outlined the films events was passed for a finished product. Where major plot development or emotional discharge is expected, the acting performances fall short and disappoint time and again.Where do I even begin to exemplify this? I felt like every three minutes something in this movie irritated me to the point that I almost gave up watching it. Was it the jolly and utterly unconvincingly acted coincidental reunion of a Jewish woman with her family after being separated by years of Nazi occupation? Or the lack of emotional burden expressed by her at the equally sudden death of said family moments later vis-a-vis the hysteric attack that ensues after she learns of the execution of her Nazi officer lover, Captain Muntze? Or maybe the blind trust placed by Dutch Resistance fighters in said Captain, who after sleeping with our undercover Jewish heroine turns out to be a very compassionate and helpful guy despite years of service to the Reich? Or possibly the ease with which a Canadian commander, having liberated a Dutch town, is persuaded to comply with a German military tribunal sentence by a NAZI GENERAL, and the crime was NOT carrying out retributions towards FAMILIES OF DUTCH RESISTANCE FIGHTERS? Yes, and there was more, much more.When the main lead, who by the way is infiltrating a Nazi HQ in order to get back at the enemy, reveals her affiliation with Dutch Resistance to an obviously promiscuous female co-worker of ambiguous loyalty and weak character, you know someone doesn't give two shits about contextual credibility. Even though the setting and premise of the film are interesting, it all becomes irrelevant through it's lack of depth or exploration of...anything. The films pace gives the impression that it was cut by a person with severe ADD who got bored with the scene they were working on between 5 and 10 minutes into it and just wanted to move on to the next one. I mean, when you can't even make a love scene reflect the sexual interest of at least one of the two people about engage in love-making, there really isn't much going for you by that point.This movie was a joke, a bad one too, and I don't see how this can be classified as one of Paul Verhoeven's so-called "satirical" works, thus somehow making it less terrible(?) Anyone who says that should stop talking, because you can't talk me into thinking you actually believe that poppycock. If you have any reverence for the time-period and the genre, you will probably feel the same way I do. If this movie was based on real events, as it states, then I hope it was based on them with a substantial amount of deviation from them.