With a plot from a 60's war movie

Rating: 3/10 (1 July 2007)

Seriously, what's going on here? an 8.1 rating? How is this possible I wonder after watching the film and barely finishing it. I'm a big fan of WW2 themed movies and I even found Verhooven's "Soldaat van Oranje" to my liking, considering it's from 1977 when WW2 movies were more action oriented without multi layered characters (like One Bridge too Far, etc). But Black book is significantly worse, sometimes you feel like you're watching an old action adventure like "Where Eagles dare" (1968). Don't get me wrong, I like that sort of thing in a cartoon black or white goodguy/badguy kind of way, but it has little to do with reality, which seems to be Veerhoven's intention to portray (granted he tries to spice it up a bit). But shallow characters a predictable plot and cliché typed dialogue makes this movie a big disappointment. After the release of recent films like "Der Untergang" and "Sophie Scholl" I'm quite surprised that "Black Book" is able to impress the people on IMDb enough to give it an 8 range rating. Maybe it's the old romantic portrayal of the second world war that people like. Uncomplicated, straight good guys versus evil bad guys. Because the fact that there are exceptions of a single good German in this film and two single "bad" dutchmen are definitely not enough to overshadow the classic stereotypes.