I don't mind that it's totally implausible. I don't even mind that the performances are truly dreadful. Michael Douglas' entire performance looked like it was done under the influence of head-to-toe Novocaine injections. And as for Melanie Griffith? Well the powers-that-be should have known what they were getting when they cast her. You can hardly blame a one-note actress for playing the only tune she knows now can you? If they had wanted an attractive actress that could also pull-off intelligence, they would have gotten someone like Jodie Foster. What I do mind is that this movie does a disservice to the truly courageous women (and there were many of them) who really did find themselves in situations like this in occupied Europe and needed to use every bit of their wits and bodies to survive. They deserved a better movie. In reality, these women were smart and cunning, and even with the best of training, could usually never spend much time in one place. If they had been as clumsy as Griffith, they never would have made it past the first day.
Let's count the big blunders (POSSIBLE SPOILERS): 1. An unbelievable cover story. A good home cook is not a professional cook, even if she could make a killer strudel. For a more convincing plot, she should have gone into the household in a less prominent position, like a maid. And by the way, no professional cook ever serves at table. 2. Allowing her aristocratic contact (Joely Richardson) to introduce her, with her supposedly unmistakable low class Berlin accent, to her mother as a "friend from school", especially when her mother happens to be a friend of Hitler's. This was another dumb move. 3. Telling her contact she was half Jewish? No spy would give any information whatsoever that could be revealed to a 3rd party in an interrogation. 4. Telling her contact where her Jewish relatives are hiding (see point #3). 5. Contacting the fish monger with a personal agenda and having him actually help her. He never would have done it. 6. Taking the children along on the little jaunt to the cellar where her Jewish relatives were hiding. Since, as children of a prominent general, they both would have been, at least nominally, members of a junior division of the Hitler Youth, how would she have explained it to them (and to their father) had the cousins been there? 7. Causing that scene in the fish market. Spy 101 - no spy ever wants to call attention to his or herself.
And there are many more egregious examples, including the rinky-dink "trick" purse that popped open at an inopportune moment. Believe it or not, the devices they used during WWII were quite sophisticated and "Q-worthy". And then there's Michael Douglas' character slipping in and out of Germany unable to speak German! Thank God the Germans were too stupid to hand him a pencil and paper after revealing his throat wound.
Arrrggghh!.
I'm better now. I love good romance. I love good intrigue. But most of all, I love a good story, and this movie isn't it.
Let's count the big blunders (POSSIBLE SPOILERS): 1. An unbelievable cover story. A good home cook is not a professional cook, even if she could make a killer strudel. For a more convincing plot, she should have gone into the household in a less prominent position, like a maid. And by the way, no professional cook ever serves at table. 2. Allowing her aristocratic contact (Joely Richardson) to introduce her, with her supposedly unmistakable low class Berlin accent, to her mother as a "friend from school", especially when her mother happens to be a friend of Hitler's. This was another dumb move. 3. Telling her contact she was half Jewish? No spy would give any information whatsoever that could be revealed to a 3rd party in an interrogation. 4. Telling her contact where her Jewish relatives are hiding (see point #3). 5. Contacting the fish monger with a personal agenda and having him actually help her. He never would have done it. 6. Taking the children along on the little jaunt to the cellar where her Jewish relatives were hiding. Since, as children of a prominent general, they both would have been, at least nominally, members of a junior division of the Hitler Youth, how would she have explained it to them (and to their father) had the cousins been there? 7. Causing that scene in the fish market. Spy 101 - no spy ever wants to call attention to his or herself.
And there are many more egregious examples, including the rinky-dink "trick" purse that popped open at an inopportune moment. Believe it or not, the devices they used during WWII were quite sophisticated and "Q-worthy". And then there's Michael Douglas' character slipping in and out of Germany unable to speak German! Thank God the Germans were too stupid to hand him a pencil and paper after revealing his throat wound.
Arrrggghh!.
I'm better now. I love good romance. I love good intrigue. But most of all, I love a good story, and this movie isn't it.