The Good German

While Steven Soderbergh’s latest looks great, features a decent George Clooney performance and has a terrific score, the overall tone of the film is that of boredom. Clooney plays a military journalist who finds himself investigating a murder that involves his emotionally erratic driver (Tobey Maguire doing good playing bad) and his former lover (Cate Blanchett, uncharacteristically overacting in ingénue mode). The movie, shot in black and white, has its moments of interest, but it builds up to a big nothing with an ending that falls abruptly flat. It’s depressing because Soderbergh and Clooney are going for something adventurous and different here, and their effort is admirable. Admirable effort doesn’t always make for a good movie, and this is an example of one that isn’t very good at all. Maguire steals the scenes he is in.