Allied is a movie which sparked millions of rumours as Angelina Jolie announced her split from Brad Pitt on the day the first trailer of the movie released.
Despite holding a fair rating on IMDB and also in Rotten Tomatoes, this Paramount Pictures' movie failed to garner acclaim amidst various film critics across the globe.
Starring Brad Pitt and Marion Cotillard, Robert Zemeckis' spy thriller revolves around 1940's World War II era. In the movie, Brad Pitt plays the character of Max, a Canadian military intelligence officer on a mission in Morocco. And, Marianne Cotillard, a French resistance fighter played Pitt's onscreen wife. They fall in love after meeting on a dangerous mission in North Africa. Then it becomes a real relationship soon between these two that leads to marriage and a child too. Max begins to suspect Marianne might actually be a Nazi spy, however, and is ordered by his military superiors to observe and kill her.
Here, let's take a look what the critics have said worldwide.
Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian
"As Pitt's marriage collapsed in the real world, social media buzzed impertinently about the Allied stars' relationship. But in this film, there is no chemistry, no romantic fusion, no Bradion, no Mariobrad. Their screen passion bursts forth like a cold wet teabag falling out of a mug that you have upended over the kitchen sink and don't much feel like washing up."
"It seems like tourist cinema: a tourist visit to the heritage-wartime past, with Max and Marianne looking like uncomfortable tourists in each other's languages and in each other's lives."
Robbie Collin, The Telegraph
Director "Zemeckis is a demon for unforgettable detail – the tracer fire that lights up the sky during an air raid, the snowy crunch of broken glass underfoot the morning after – but the one shot that stays with you more than any other is Marianne's face at the couple's wedding reception in a Hampstead pub."
"Comparisons to Mr and Mrs Smith, Pitt's drearily smug spy-vs-spy romp from 2005, were probably inevitable, not least because each film coincided with a real-life Pitt divorce. "
David Rooney, The Hollywood Reporter
"Not once but twice in Robert Zemeckis' dreary spy thriller, Allied, Marion Cotillard's character, an undercover World War II operative, says, "I keep the emotions real. That's why it works." Sadly, neither the director nor the cast appear to have absorbed that message in this inert period piece, which suffers from an absence of chemistry between leads Cotillard and Brad Pitt, undercutting the romance on which much of the supposed suspense should hinge."
"Sluggish pacing throughout saps most of the tension, but the real issue is the absence of a solid foundation for the central romance. Since the love between Max and Marianne never generates real sparks, the possibility that their alliance is built on duplicity unfolds in frenetic late-action plotting without much emotional investment."
Michael Phillips – Chicago Tribune
"In a movie built around two characters, Pitt does not hold up his 50 percent. As written Max is a reactive dullard. Whether it's the demands of his occasional, stilted French-language dialogue or the challenge of simply keeping up with Cotillard, a movie star who's a more surprising actor, Pitt struggles to engage with the material. The audience, I suspect, may struggle, too."
Kate Erbland – IndieWire
"Allied forces its characters to abandon their most distinctive characteristics – Max is a planner, Marianne eschews emotion – to keep the initially intriguing plot moving forward."
".....and is wholly unable to keep its initial pizzazz and pleasure chugging along through a bloated 124-minute runtime. War is hell, but "Allied" isn't much better, as it wastes a good idea and a better cast."
Owen Gleiberman - Variety
"Allied is tense and absorbing, yet the film's climactic act somehow falls short. Zemeckis and company don't make any obvious missteps, but the movie, in trying to reach out and tug on our heartstrings, goes soft regarding what the Marianne we're presented with would choose to do."
Allied is slated to hit screen in the U.S. on November 23.
