Allied (2016) Review

Allied is the 2016 romantic thriller directed by Robert Zemeckis, written by Steven Knight, starring Brad Pitt and Marion Cotillard.

Plot Synopsis

Allied is about this Canadian spy, Max Vatan, who works with a French resistance fighter, Marianne Beausejour in Casablanca to assassinate a German ambassador. They fake their love at first, but soon, they start to love each other for real. But Max is shocked when he is forced into an investigation that his agency suspects that his wife may be a German spy, using him to gather intelligence. Max must learn the truth to see if their love is real or not.

The Positives 

I was really excited for this movie. The plot of the movie seems really interesting and it felt very suspenseful. Also, the people behind this film are very talented. Robert Zemeckis directed some iconic films such as Forrest Gump and Back to the Future. I love the direction what they were trying to go for and it works for much of the scenes. And I can tell they tried to make the film feel old-fashioned aside it being set in the 1940s. Brad Pitt and Marion Cotillard both provided solid performances.

The Negatives

While I felt that the actors gave a solid performance and I do respect Zemeckis' work, I'm afraid to say that I felt a bit disappointed with this movie. Look, before, I list the problems I had with this film. I'll start off by saying I'm aware that this is a romance film. Don't think of it as an action movie as much as the trailers tried to make it seem like it. There's romance here and there's ALOT of it. And I'll admit, I'm not a fan of romance movies, but I won't make that a factor as why I didn't like the movie as much. The film is not bad, it was just lacking in my opinion. The film introduced a plot with a suspenseful nature to it. You know, he's trying to figure out if his wife is truly a German spy; however, the film fails to maintain tension or urgency of the situation. You expect that since this is supposedly a thriller, there would be tension, but it's lacking here. The suspense and thriller aspects of this movie are actually secondary to the movie. The movie is really focused on the romance between Brad Pitt and Marion Cotillard. And the pacing is very slow moving, which makes the movie feel like almost nothing is happening also because there are too many unnecessary shots in the film. It feels like 60% of the movie could have been cut down to make a more flowing film because there were too many scenes that dragged the film until you hit very few critical points of the story that makes it move forward.

Conclusion

All in all, if you were expecting the same amount of tension that you got from the trailers and a strong story here, you'd probably be disappointed. Though, if you were expecting a romance movie and slow pacing doesn't bother you that much, you'll get that here. I think if you go into it expecting it as a full-fledged romance movie rather than a thriller, then you probably would enjoy the movie way more than I did. Because I feel the trailers purposefully made the movie look like a nail-biting thriller to get people hooked into the movie.

Score: C-