entertaining, but a little overdone

Rating: 6/10 (17 February 2007)

slick, expertly shot adventure in occupied Holland, typical Verhoeven style. Good acting. But, the script is a little over the top, and it rattles. All the events in the film (well, most) happened in Holland during these five years, and some events more than once, but not to one or two people and not within a few months. Difficult to accept that the chief of the SD does not really know or care what kind of torture is going on three floors below his office every day and can still be a nice guy that you can easily fall in love with as a Jew girl. And there are more of these "constructed twists".
And to be fair, OliverFranks, if you read up on your history the Dutch in WW II were really not that different from people in other occupied countries. Collaborators, some, people earning a few (or more) guilders by dealing with the Germans, some, people trying to get by without getting into trouble (most) and people resisting actively (some)or passively (many). The scene where executed resistance workers are being dug up in the sand dunes near the Hague are not really Verhoeven's imagination. Dutch people turned Jews in for a reward of a few guilders, and they also hid them risking their lives. Dutch policemen actively helped the Germans find resistance workers and other Dutch policemen risked their lives helping resistance workers with uniforms, guns or by active support. Verhoeven tries to demonstrate that history is not black and white, and overshoots, as is his style. The Dutch were not "good", and they were not "bad". They were a people in extraordinary circumstances, that cannot be judged collectively, as we should not judge the Germans, or the English or the Jews collectively, but by their individual deeds. Verhoeven "fault" is not inventing heroes of scoundrels, it's squeezing so many of them into one persons life. Just think of this film as entertainment, nothing more. It helps.