Verhoeven stretches our believe.

Rating: Null/10 (23 January 2007)

I saw this film on its first day of release, in England. I say that because I was really looking forward to it. When it was over I called my (Dutch) girlfriend and said 'it's an absolutely awful film!'. I agree it is easy on the eye and Carice van Houten is great to look at but the story is preposterous. It's exciting, moving and compelling, but some of the twists are just too much, bearing in mind this is supposed to be a serious film about the Dutch in World War 2. Having said that, I did tell my girlfriend to go see it, if only to hear her opinion. I SO wanted to love it. I was SO disappointed. I can't detail any of the nonsense twists without spoilers but there is one episode that is so far fetched as to bely belief. Also (this isn't a spoiler) are we really supposed to believe that the Nazi SS commander and head of Gestapo in Amsterdam, Muntze, is really a pretty nice guy underneath. He's SS, Gestapo, for goodness sake. We're supposed to be rooting for him? Don't think so!