"We will kill that girl! However, wherever, whenever."

Rating: 4/10 (25 January 2008)

After having read great amount of high praised reviews and comments about Paul Verhoeven's historic WWII Drama /Spy/Thriller, "Black Book" which he made in Netherlands, I was exited to see it. I am a fan of Verhoeven's early films set in his native country. I've seen "Turkish Delight" (1973) and "the Fourth Man" (1983) and I found them both excellent. Joe Ezsterhaus who worked with Verhoeven said about him: "The guy is like his movies: brilliant, mercurial, very daring, perverse, a wonderful series of paradoxes and contradictions..." Both, "Turkish Delight", Verhoeven's variation of Hollywood "Love story" and "The Fourth Man" which reminds "Basic Instinct" but with much more class, style, and humor, match Esterhaus' description perfectly. As for "Black Book", it was a disappointment. Don't get me wrong, Verhoeven's attempt to make a film which takes place during the dark times in the Holland's and European history is watchable and entertaining. Beautifully filmed and moving along quite fast, "Black Book" is the story of a Dutch Jewish girl who tries to survive the war and the Nazi occupation in Holland. After the failed attempt of her family and dozens others Jews to escape on the boat to the liberated south which left her the sole survivor, she was able to join the Dutch Resistance, to infiltrate the regional Gestapo headquarters and to become the mistress of the Gestapo high rank officer, Ludwig Müntze (Sebastian Koch of "The Lives of Others"). Verhoeven's gets a fine performance out of his young star. Carice van Houten, as Rachel/Ellis carries the movie mostly by herself. She is beautiful, talented, brave, and convincing in every scene. I personally don't mind the scenes of graphic sexuality and violence - anyone who is familiar with at least few of Paul Verhoeven's films, should be prepared for raw sensuality, aggressive movie-making, and more than one revolting scene. The problem of the movie, IMO, is that it tries too hard to combine many different stories and many genres but makes too many obvious and deliberate historical errors for the entertainment purposes and ends up as the unrealistic, exploitive, over-wrought melodrama with the poorly developed key characters (above mentioned Muntze, for example) and too many unbelievable thus ridiculous plot twists. If you are interested in not just entertaining but more serious and subtle films exploring Holocausts, I'd recommend Agnieszka Holland's "Europe, Europe" (1990), Joseph Losey's "Mr. Klein" (1976), and certainly, Roman Polanski's "The Pianist". If you want to see a film about disturbing relationship between a Nazi officer and a Jewish girl, two people who had met at the most horrifying circumstances but were not able to forget each other, see Liliana Cavani's controversial "The Night Porter" (1974) which is much classier than Verhoeven's movie.