The Good German

This is Soderbergh's show, and a haunting and hypnotic show it is.Read Full Review »

The leisure-time viewer will say, ''Hey, this is sort of like "Casablanca," so why play it again?''Read Full Review »

The Good German, Steven Soderbergh's film noir homage, is nearly perfect when it comes to style and tone, but it concentrates so single-mindedly on the mechanics of the narrative that it loses sight of its characters.Read Full Review »

Soderbergh doesn't miss a trick, and for a while it's fun for us to share in his fun. But there comes a moment when his Euro-noir film turns into another sort of exercise for the audience: an exercise in boredom.Read Full Review »

It does get mired in its obsession with its own style.Read Full Review »

Attempting a frame-by-frame duplication of Warner Bros. '40s filmmaking--even the extroverted acting style apes the period--Soderbergh has produced a movie so self-conscious that it's drained of all life.Read Full Review »

Of The Good German, it can be said that the operation was a brilliant success, even if the patient is not merely dead but most sincerely dead. The movie, in other words, lies there as if on a slab in a morgue, while you admire the corpse for its beauty.Read Full Review »

Soderbergh's homage to film noir and wartime thrillers, is technically stunning but narratively and thematically hollow.Read Full Review »

In his genre pastiche The Good German, Steven Soderbergh has tried to resurrect the magic of classical Hollywood, principally by sucking out all the air, energy and pleasure from his own filmmaking.Read Full Review »

However flavorsome though, The Good German is seriously deficient in the stars' star power and narrative excitement. The movie is lovingly framed, carefully lit, and fatally insipid. The direction is slack; the pacing is perfunctory.Read Full Review »