"The Good German" is based on a novel by Joseph Kanon with a script by Paul Attanasio. I'll try to dope out a bare outline for you: War correspondent Jake Geismer (George Clooney) returns to Berlin right after the end of World War ll. While running a news bureau in Berlin years earlier, he had a lover named Lena Brandt (Cate Blanchett). Returning to cover the victorious Allies' Potsdam Conference (with Joseph Stalin, Winston Churchill and Harry S. Truman meeting to carve up Germany and Poland) he is given an officer's uniform, a driver Corporal Tully (Tobey Maguire), and a fake car. Is it just a coincidence that Tully is Lena's pimp?

Lena is bitter, cold, and emotionally a fog. She and Jake might have been lovers, but they never talked. Jake is shocked to find out that Lena has a husband who is wanted by both the U.S. and Soviet governments. Why does Lena keep telling everyone her husband Emil is dead? The U.S. has quickly developed an appetite for sneaking German rocket scientists out of Germany and Lena's mathematician husband assisted one of their star scientists. Emil and Lena know some dirty secrets about this world-renowned scientist's experiments.

All Lena wants to do is get out of Berlin. First Tully, then Jake, will do anything to obtain the right papers and the money for this to happen. Is Lena grateful? Not by her attitude. Regardless of her aloofness towards Jake, he gets beat up a few times and badgered bloody trying to help her. He will not give up! Lena is "soul-dead" because of what she had to do to survive in Nazi Germany. Nothing matters to Jake except getting Lena out of Berlin. When Lena finally tells him her dark secret, his final remark to Lena should have been:

"You *****."

So the morality of "The Good German" collapses with our hero Jake being duped. What is it about Lena that had poor Jake so besotted? Shouldn't Lena have been arrested instead of given the golden ticket out of town? Jake never really knew the woman he is risking his life for. As soon as you find out what Lena did to survive, sympathy for Lena evaporates. Jake is a silly romantic who, after helping Lena, goes back to covering the Potsdam Conference.

Clooney and Soderbergh have a strong career-marriage (and a production company). Is this Soderbergh's Valentine to George, who fancies himself a 40s-style movie star? The over-produced music score is terrible. The lousy, blurry photography only highlights the weakness of the story. There is no moral center. If Jake is so crazy about Lena, why didn't he keep tabs on her? The archival footage and studio back lot sets give the film a slapped-together feeling. Some scenes look fake.

Maguire, grateful not to be playing a comic book character, overacts. Instead of being forceful, he screeches. Who believes he could be a bully and a pimp? Does his face telegraph a man who would slug a woman in the stomach?

Once again Soderbergh is doing his "experimental" work – when has this ever worked for him? Soderbergh does it all: the cinematography (using an actual ‘40s lenses and just one camera!) and the editing, but he should have left those chores to others more skilled in black and white work and concentrated on directing.

The end scene homage to "Casablanca" made people laugh. Could this have been Soderbergh's intention? In any case the Good German isn't worth a hill of beans, much less the price of a theater ticket.

(We at zboneman.com are excited to welcome the prolific and multi-talented writer Victoria Alexander to our staff. Critic for http://www.filmsinreview.com/ and pundit and humorist responsible for the candid and fearlessly funny "The Devil's Hammer," her column appears every Monday on http://fromthebalcony.com. Start off your week with a good hard laugh. It's a thrill to have her on board. Victoria Alexander answers every email and can be contacted directly at masauu@aol.com.)