Verhoeven delivers one of the best war-time thrillers ever filmed

Rating: 10/10 (20 November 2015)

Wow! Who could have imagined that one of the best war-time thrillers of the last fifty years would be made by the man who brought us the comic-book violence of TOTAL RECALL and STARSHIP TROOPERS? Yes, Dutch director Paul Verhoeven is the man behind this story of the Dutch resistance in WWII, and it's his best work since STARSHIP TROOPERS. It's also an atypical outing for the director more at home with blood and guts and OTT action and a throwback to his films of old like SOLDIER OF ORANGE. This is an old-fashioned thriller with a bit of everything thrown in for audiences – romance, action, suspense, thrills, drama, human emotion. It's a film detailing the human condition and at its heart it contains an absolutely fantastic performance from a virtually unknown Dutch actress, Carice van Houten, who looks like Naomi Watts but is about a million times better as an actress.
The film details the constant struggle for power and supremacy between the Dutch resistance and the Nazis in the dying days of WWII. What I loved most about the plot was the constant twists and turns and surprises at every stage. I was trying to second-guess this film at some instances but it never worked, because I could never figure out what was going to happen next. Even the ending is a great surprise. There's a conspirator at work behind the scenes, a real traitor, but figuring out his or her identity is nigh on impossible. Great scriptwriting like this doesn't come along every day!
The cast is uniformly excellent, particularly Sebastian Koch as the sympathetic Nazi officer. Attention to detail is spot on and you come away feeling that the research has been 100%. The film's budget is up on screen to see and all of the old cars and uniforms look amazing. Even the special effects don't disappoint. Verhoeven can't resist throwing in some of his trademark violence, here in the form of shoot-outs and the like, and even some fairly explicit sex and nudity a la BASIC INSTINCT. But in the end, BLACK BOOK transcends all of its parts to become a thoroughly engaging and excellent war epic.