Disappointing...

The Good German (Steven Soderbergh, 2006)

Wow, what is there to say about this film. No one knows how bad i wanted to love this film. I remember sitting in the theater and seeing the trailer to the good german and was absolutely floored. Sadly, that brings me to the first flaw that i didn't expect at all. All the best looking scenes in the film are in the trailer. The lighting in every other scene is horrible. Everything is either to bright or just way to dark, it gives it like a muddy feeling which isn't film noir. Film noir is all about shadows and i thing soderbergh thought just darkening the room would be okay, well it's not. This was such a shock to me, my jaw was literally hanging. I sat there thinking what the hell happened. Every once in a while throughout the film we get a good looking scenes (which come rarely) and i applaud them but rest is just bad. The scenes inside the car feel like a student film which don't even come off as film noir. This was something i didn't expect.

The other flaw that this film has was something that i saw coming from way before the film's release and that was the approach to the film. Soderbergh had good intentions by wanting to make a film noir (great idea) that contained profanity and sexual content (bad idea). He said that he wanted to make the film that the original film directors wanted to. In the film noir era the directors wanted to put sex and profanity in their films but didn't because of producers and shock to audiences. This gave the directors a way to be creative and use metaphors for sex and give the leads great one liners instead of using words like "Fuck" and "Bitch". That's the charm of film noir, everything is hidden in shadows, the dialouge, the sex and the tone. Film noir's are so memorable because of the sexy dames that the actress protrays without having a single sex scene and the great bad ass male leads that don't have to say a single bad word while still keeping a bad ass persona. The way Soderbergh made this film and approached it was just a bad idea from the beginning. It had the slight chance of atleast being entertaining but comes off as awkward and doesn't have the same feel of film noirs.

I don't know what soderbergh did because he always stated that while making the film he would constently watch film noirs 24/7. It just goes to show you that you have to study these films and understand them, not just watch them and try to copy them. Soderbergh tried and when he did it right, he nailed it but that only comes about three times throughout the film. One more thing i have to say about Soderbergh is that he needs to stop experimenting and make a film again. I understand that he wants to try to break into new things and do everything but he has to keep a mind set that we can concentrate on and not jump to project to project. The only person that can do that and pull it off (occasionally) is richard linklater. Also with soderbergh's experiments such as bubble in this film, bubble only succeeds because it's something fresh, something original in it's experimentation and content. Where The good German fails is that it's trying to be something else and obviously from viewing the film Soderbergh wasn't ready because this film just blew up in his face.

Grade C