Movie · 2016 · Action, Drama, War, Romance, Thriller · 2h 4m · R · English
Curator score: 3.6/10 (287K ratings)
The enemy is listening.
Overview
In 1942, an intelligence officer in North Africa encounters a female French Resistance fighter on a deadly mission behind enemy lines. When they reunite in London, their relationship is tested by the pressures of war.
Ratings
Curator score: 3.6/10
IMDb: 7.1/10
Letterboxd: 3.30/5
Rotten Tomatoes: 60%
Metacritic: 60
TMDB: 6.8/10
Director
Robert Zemeckis
Production
Paramount Pictures, GK Films, ImageMovers, Huahua Media
Cast
Brad Pitt, Marion Cotillard, Jared Harris, Simon McBurney, Lizzy Caplan, Daniel Betts, Matthew Goode, Camille Cottin, Michael McKell, August Diehl, Thierry Frémont, Vincent Ebrahim, Vincent Latorre, Fleur Poad, Miryam Hayward, Iselle Rifat, Aysha Kanayo, Sally Messham, Anton Blake Horowitz, Charlotte Hope
Where to watch
Paramount Plus Essential
Curator Review
Verdict
A glossy World War II spy romance with strong star chemistry, handsome period design, and a pulpy sense of intrigue, but it can feel emotionally thin and over-controlled. If you like elegant wartime melodrama with espionage twists, it has enough style and momentum to work; if you want deep character writing or a truly gripping thriller, it may disappoint.
Best for
viewers who enjoy wartime romances with espionage and betrayal
fans of polished studio craft and old-Hollywood sheen
audiences looking for a star-driven, mid-budget adult drama
people who like melodrama mixed with spy-movie mechanics
Skip if
you want gritty realism over glossy reconstruction
you need a tightly plotted thriller with sustained suspense
you are allergic to heightened romance and soap-opera turns
you prefer emotionally raw war films to polished period entertainment
Overview
Allied is the kind of movie that wants to feel like a classic: elegant, dangerous, and a little bit swoony. Robert Zemeckis stages it with a sleek, artificial confidence that suits a story built on performance, secrecy, and shifting identities. Brad Pitt and Marion Cotillard have real movie-star presence, and the film knows how to use clothes, shadows, and wartime glamour as part of the seduction.
Worth noting
The problem is that the movie often seems more interested in the idea of a great wartime romance than in fully earning one. The espionage material is sturdy enough, but the emotional beats can feel programmed, and the thriller tension never quite becomes irresistible. When it leans into its pulpy pleasures, it’s entertaining; when it reaches for deeper feeling, it can come off as oddly remote.
Bottom line
Still, there’s a lot to admire in the craftsmanship and the audacity of the tone. It’s a polished, old-fashioned adult studio film made with modern digital precision, and that combination gives it a strange, slightly unreal atmosphere. For the right viewer, that sheen is part of the appeal.
Top Letterboxd reviews
davidehrlich (2.5★) · 825 likes
possibly the least interesting movie one could make about Brad Pitt and Marion Cotillard fucking throughout the last years of World War II. but hey, good news for anyone who's ever wanted to watch two people bone during a flagrantly fake CG sandstorm in the Moroccan desert. and the clothes are shiny!
clownhead (3★) · 721 likes
what on earth possesses a man to use arial bold for title cards
Sean Fennessey (3.5★) · 515 likes
Time will be kind to this. Feels part of a lineage of somewhat ignored mid-2010s movies—David Ayer's Fury and Scorsese's Silence spring to mind, though I'm not equating them, obviously—attempting to recreate and exacerbate history within the confines of handsome modern extremity. I usually hate when every set looks as though it has just been built, every stitch of clothing recently sewn. In this case, the game of espionage--artifice, performance, hidden truth--plays to its advantage. This does, at times, look like a movie Brad Pitt's character from Babylon would have made if he'd survived the transition to talkies.
Marian (3.5★) · 435 likes
- marion cotillard
- the lesbian sister
- the lesbian sister's girlfriend
- the dude from inglourious basterds playing the exact same character
- marion cotillard's dresses
- brad pitt wanting to move to fucking medicine hat alberta for some reason???
- marion cotillard
If the appeal is dangerous chemistry and betrayal, this is a sharper, hotter noir counterpart.
Topics
World War II, spy romance, wartime melodrama, espionage thriller, period piece, glossy production design, betrayal, adult drama, romantic suspense, old-Hollywood style