Movie · 2006 · Drama, Mystery, Romance, Thriller, War · 1h 48m · R · English
Curator score: 1.5/10 (38.2K ratings)
If war is Hell, then what comes after?
Overview
An American journalist arrives in Berlin just after the end of World War Two. He becomes involved in a murder mystery surrounding a dead GI who washes up at a lakeside mansion during the Potsdam negotiations between the Allied powers. Soon his investigation connects with his search for his married pre-war German lover.
Ratings
Curator score: 1.5/10
IMDb: 6.0/10
Letterboxd: 2.99/5
Rotten Tomatoes: 34%
Metacritic: 49
TMDB: 5.8/10
Director
Steven Soderbergh
Production
Warner Bros. Pictures, Virtual Studios, Section Eight
Cast
George Clooney, Cate Blanchett, Tobey Maguire, Beau Bridges, Tony Curran, Leland Orser, Jack Thompson, Robin Weigert, Ravil Isyanov, Christian Oliver, Dave Power, Don Pugsley, Dominic Comperatore, John Roeder, J. Paul Boehmer, Igor Korošec, Boris Kievsky, Vladimir Kulikov, Yevgeniy Narovlyanskiy, Aleksandr Sountsov
Curator Review
Verdict
A meticulously designed postwar noir pastiche with strong performances and a sharp sense of historical unease, but the cool, self-conscious style can keep the drama at arm’s length. It’s most rewarding if you enjoy formal exercises, period atmosphere, and morally compromised espionage stories.
Best for
noir fans
Steven Soderbergh completists
viewers who like postwar Berlin settings
people drawn to morally gray wartime mysteries
fans of stylized period filmmaking
Skip if
you want a fast-moving thriller
you dislike deliberate pastiche
you need emotional warmth or romantic chemistry to carry the story
you prefer classic noir over revisionist homage
you’re impatient with slow, talky investigations
Overview
The Good German is less a conventional mystery than a controlled experiment in how far a modern filmmaker can push a 1940s studio style. Soderbergh recreates the look and feel of postwar noir with impressive precision, from the monochrome palette to the period-authentic technical choices, and the result has a chilly, haunted beauty.
Worth noting
What gives the film its bite is not just the aesthetic mimicry but the moral rot underneath it. The Berlin setting, the Allied negotiations, and the buried wartime compromises all feed into a story about guilt, opportunism, and the convenient lies people tell after catastrophe. That’s where the movie feels most alive, even when the plotting is deliberately opaque.
Bottom line
Still, the film can feel mannered and emotionally distant. The romance and the mystery never fully fuse into something propulsive, so the experience depends on whether you’re engaged by the concept, the craft, and the atmosphere more than by narrative momentum. For the right viewer, that’s enough to make it intriguing; for others, it will feel like a beautifully made exercise.
Top Letterboxd reviews
Arsaib Gilbert (4★) · 125 likes
[Steven Soderbergh: Ranked]
Similar to what Quentin Tarantino accomplished in Death Proof (2007), slyly delivering a quintessential Tarantino talkathon under the guise of an homage to exploitation film sub-genres not known for their textual prowess, Steven Soderbergh remains true to himself in The Good German, a stylized tribute to postwar noir in which style more or less serves as window dressing. His typically smart, dispassionate, probing film goes to places its predecessors, for a variety of reasons, could not, and… more
júlia (2.5★) · 109 likes
tobey maguire beating the shit out of george clooney is the most unfitting thing i've ever seen
gregs1999 (3★) · 78 likes
I really enjoyed the 40’s aesthetic of the set design, although the camera movements felt more modern. A noir score would have added another layer. Our three leads were pretty good. Pacing was a little off, so my interest kept on waning, it ended up being an interesting experience.
Steven Soderbergh ranked
shookone (1.5★) · 69 likes
bleary, pale and facile imitation of the noir genre. a little bit of dry humor doesn't get you through the sterile tediousness of this rehashed epoch fragment.
Stephen Gillespie (2★) · 63 likes
In another bizarre career move from Steven Soderbergh, we have a hugely committed pastiche. Everything about the technical craft here is sublime. It feels just like a post war noir, with every detail exactly right, down to the lens choices and lighting technology.
The attention to detail is astonishing, even the acting modelled around aping the style that was. The purpose of this is interesting, to use the clothing of the familiar post war noir in order to tell the… more
1949 · Thriller, Mystery · 1h 45m · NR · Curator 9.6/10 (377K ratings) · Where to watch: Amazon Prime Video, IndieFlix, Cineverse, Amazon Prime Video with Ads
A benchmark for shadowy postwar intrigue, ruined cities, and moral uncertainty.