Tabloid gossip would have us believe that Allied is the Hollywood spoiler that helped break up Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt, a wartime potboiler that failed to keep its surging passions confined to the screen. This, I fear, credits the film with too much power, not least because Allied does not so much surge as leak, like an exhausted dirigible struggling to stay airborne.
Directed by Robert Zemeckis from a Steven Knight script, this purports to be a dashing romantic thriller in the Casablanca or Notorious vein; dropped behind enemy lines, fraternising with Nazis. Pitt stars as wing commander Max Vatan; Marion Cotillard as ruthless Marian Beauséjour of the French resistance. Thrown together, these deep-cover agents play-act the role of a married couple with such aplomb that they decide to wed in real life once their assignment is done. Except that all is not well in the Vatans’ blitzed London Eden, because now the authorities suspect Marian is a spy and it is at this point that the film begins to lose velocity, croaking and wheezing through an overstuffed second half.
It doesn’t help that the leads prove so unconvincing as a couple. Cotillard’s Marian remains resolutely unreadable and while this is partly the point, the actor appears in no hurry to delve behind the enigma. But the real problem is Pitt, who gives his flattest, most uninteresting performance this side of Troy. Midway through the film, crisis blooming, Max is sent plodding off on a new mission to prove his wife’s innocence, a petulant frown on his face, his thoughts apparently directed elsewhere. He’s searching for answers or the exit door, whichever comes first.
