Bloody Mata Hari

Rating: 3/10 (13 January 2008)

Entertainment over verite? "The Guns of Navarone" over "Schindler's List"? How do you like your War? I'm in the latter camp which is probably why I was so disappointed in this breathless big-money epic. The introductory legend of the movie would have us believe this is all based on a true story but what we get instead is a cliché-ridden action-packed screen-fest which to my eyes and ears seriously fails its serious subject matter. There is in the plot I believe, a taut story to be told of the different reactions of a population to military occupation, between collaborators and resistance but nothing gets in the way of the director's juggernaut vision of shoot-'em-up violence, gratuitous nudity and a plot with so many twists and turns it threatens to bore a hole in the floor. We get not one but two traitors in the midst of the resistance fighters and for good measure the most miraculous recovery from an overdose of insulin this side of Lazarus. The actors try hard and there's no denying that Carice Van Houten is strikingly attractive and resourceful in the lead part. But all in all, they're combating hackneyed stereotypical roles and in the main fail to overcome the limitations of the writing. Paul Voerhaven has seemed to me in the past to be more style over content. On this occasion he's got too much content to play with and instead crams his film so that the end product looks like a number of TV episodes badly edited together to make a disappointing whole. Oh for some calmness at the centre of this particular maelstrom...