A Finely Crafted War Movie, But...

Rating: 7/10 (22 April 2008)

There is a lot to recommend "Black Book" to international audiences but the scale of the movie eventually works against it. The screenplay is based on actual events within German-occupied Holland during WWII, but Paul Verhoeven and his co-writer Gerard Soeteman have over-egged their story.
Despite some fine acting from Carice Van Houten and her supporting cast, there are moments in "Black Book" where you may begin to wonder how one person copes with so much tension and bad luck. Rachel Stein is (I assume) a composite character and this is the film's main weakness. Verhoeven and Soeteman, it seems, couldn't bear to leave anyone's anecdote out of their original screenplay and the result strained my credulity quite badly. I don't think that I would bother buying "Black Book" on DVD because, for all its atmosphere and tension, it's at least 20 minutes too long.
Whilst trying to portray what German occupation was like for Dutch people, Paul Vehoeven's otherwise admirable film tries to cram too much incident into one person's lifetime. The film does deliver quite a satisfying twist at the end but slides alarmingly toward the "Showgirls" end of Verhoeven's movie scale on the way on the way to its climax.
Having dissed it for 3 paragraphs, I would like to finish off with a recommendation to give "Black Book" a try if you like war films. It's better than a lot of recent efforts in this genre.