The fact that Allied is a decidedly old fashioned World War 2 espionage thriller/romance from director Robert Zemeckis (Forest Gump & Back To The Future) doesn’t necessarily guarantee that this new movie will prove to be a big crowd pleaser. In fact it wouldn’t be giving too much away at this point to say that sadly it actually missed the mark, a little like the ‘hero’ in the story. Starring ‘A’ listers Hollywood Oscar winner Marion Cotillard as Marianne Beauséjour French Resistance fighter and Oscar nominee Brad Pitt as Wing Commander Max Vatan a Canadian Intelligence Officer, the story kicks off in Casablanca in 1942 with more than a passing nod to Bergman and Bogart in the movie of the same name.
Max is parachuted into German occupied Morocco on a secret mission and has to meet up with Marianne who has implanted herself into the bosom of the local French ex-pats who are happy to collaborate with the Nazis running the country. They have never met before but they must play the part of a devoted married couple who are very much in love to avoid any suspicion whilst they can prepare for their assignment to kill the German Ambassador. They succeed on both points so well that when the operation is over, they profess their undying love for each other, and Max asks Marianne move back to London with him and get married.
The second part of the story moves at a much slower pace with Max back at his desk job in Whitehall, and the couple now the proud parents of a baby girl, they settle into a house in Hampstead, London’s bohemian area. Asides from the War still raging on, life couldn’t be better for this couple who are very obviously madly in love. That is until one day Max is suddenly summoned for an interview with a high ranking office in an inner Intelligence sanctum and what he is then told about Marianne not only devastates him completely, but leaves him having to face some unbearable options.
The dramatic outcome however is quite predictable and like most of this entertaining story from Brit writer Steven Knight the plot actually contains very few surprises. Which may account for the fact that despite an entrancing Cotillard giving one of her usual stunning performances, Pitt just stumbles through the piece with an awkward stunned look through most of the action.
Allied ends up not being a bad movie and has its redeeming moments (thanks mainly to M Cotillard) but it falls short trying to recapture the nostalgic feeling of a wartime romance, and drags on too long, a little like the War itself.
