In the immortal words of Heidi Klum on her “Project: Runway,” I’ve got two words for “The Good German”: Auf wiedersehen.
This convoluted, boring piece of black-and-white pretension deserves a less-than-fond farewell because in director Steven Soderbergh’s quest to pay homage to the vintage films set around the 1940s war era, he forgot what made them great. While adding the flavor of modern day standards of graphic content, he mimics all the technical elements of the past with precision in his mystery drama about murder and survival in post-World War II Berlin. But it wasn’t just the old-fashioned cameras and boom-mike sound recording, the monochromatic film noir starkness or the credit typeface, or even the stylized acting that gave power to classics including “Casablanca,” “The Third Man” or “Judgment at Nuremberg” — which are sometimes directly referenced in “The Good German,” even with specific scene set-ups.
