ALLIED Review

Breakfast Sex 

Allied

A Review By Ben Hunter

3½ Out Of 5 Stars

GET TO THE POINT BEN!

Not quite there, but engaging nonetheless!  

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The secrecy of passionate affair is enticing.  It’s cajoling nature can be quite appealing.  And then again, it can be your very demise.  

Max Vatan (Brad Pitt) works for Canadian Intelligence, just think James Bond but Canada and not Britain.  While on mission behind enemy lines, he meets his assigned wife Marianne Beausejour (Marion Cotillard) to take out a German Ambassador together.  This of course in Casablanca of all places.  Out of all the settings in the world, they had to pick this one.  Though this story takes place just a year after Humphrey Bogart tells Ingrid Bergman to get on that plane or she’ll regret it for the rest of her life.  

After the mission, Max and Marianne are intertwined from the thrill and the rush that being so close to danger bestows.  So as any couple in love would do, and especially since it’s WWII and cohabitation isn’t as much of a normalcy as it is now, they get married.  They have a little girl, Anna.  While still servicing their country on missions, they play house in palpable fashion.  

Max & Marianne as under-covers in Robert Zemeckis' new spy caper!

Director Robert Zemeckis (Cast Away, Flight, Forest Gump) takes his time setting this up and making sure our slice of aliment before us is readily toasted, warm, and buttered to suitably deliver the unexpected 2nd course of our breakfast.  We’re at an hour in at this point.  

Max receives special instruction that his wife is a German spy.  The woman we’ve come to know and admire the relationship she lives, with her husband and child.  Torn between his head and his heart, Max must carry out his orders to justify suspicions and serve his country.  Or depart from this life with his other half, the mother of his child, into the next, for high treason.  

Once we get to this debate, whether or not Max will carry this out, the film picks up and reveals its major playing cards.  Not as to the delight of Pitt’s character, who gives the audience a treat with this card game skill in the first act.  But nonetheless, I was eager to see the plot thicken and witness some real acting from 2 A-Listers/veterans.  Was Marion Cotillard as conniving and two-faced as the trailer made her out to be?  Was Brad Pitt as vulnerable and torn as the marketing says?  Oh boy oh boy, once we got past the hour long set up, though commending for taking a different route for this point in the story usually comes around the 25-30 minute mark, it was time to finally see what I paid my money to see.  To experience why this film was on my list of must sees this season.  

Is my wife really a German spy this entire time?  Does she really love me?  Am I or our daughter safe? 

So, about those questions of our veteran leads?  Yeah, no and no.  Marion Cotillard, with her Oscar quality, was just a typical, suspicious woman eagerly passive about wanting to know the normal questions a woman has when her man starts acting funny.  Brad Pitt, our torn hero who shares screen time equally due to contracts and marketing, was decent, but was this completely destroying him?  No.  Was this all an elaborate rouge to intertwine a complex and engaging storyline to shock us all to kingdom come in standing ovation afterwards for the adventure our hearts were taken upon?  Yeah, keep dreaming pal.  

As edible and sufficing as the breakfast we were served was, it was no handcrafted, made from real, quality ingredients, and healthy at the same time type of meal.  A breakfast you can taste the love all throughout as your woman made it solely for you, still scantily clad, after an infatuating night of true connection and tender.  THAT meal is the meal you want as much as you can receive it, will today be the day?  Or am I reheating leftovers, to quickly scarf down my morning nutrition after my woman quickly takes care of me in the bedroom because we’re late for work? 

The secrecy of passionate affair is enticing.  It’s cajoling nature can be quite appealing.  And then again, it can be your very demise.  

Allied (2016)
Romantic Drama, 124 Minutes, R

Written By: Steven Knight

Directed By: Robert Zemeckis 
Cast: Brad Pitt, Marion Cotillard, Jared Harris, Lizzy Caplan, Matthew Goode, Simon McBurney