The Good German Reviews
Top CriticThis cast almost makes The Good German watchable. It's just that their screenwriter and director don't do them any favors.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/5
CHUD
The Good German is an easy movie to admire... but within all that style there's nothing to love. It's a hollow movie.
Full Review
| Original Score: 6.5/10
Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
While the title raises the question of whether it is possible to escape atrocity without somehow being complicit with those committing them ... Soderbergh seems infinitely more interested in making an anachronism than a timeless film.
Full Review
| Original Score: 81/100
The Good German, Steven Soderbergh's film noir homage, is nearly perfect when it comes to style and tone, but it concentrates so single-mindedly on the mechanics of the narrative that it loses sight of its characters.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.5/4
L.A. Weekly
A few of Soderbergh's movies have foundered on a similar ironic detachment. The singular exception, Out of Sight, floated along on sexual electricity and warm movie love, but The Good German feels passionless, throttled by technique.
Mr. Soderbergh seems to have done everything within his power to keep the audience at arm's length.
Murphy's Movie Reviews
The final verdict on this movie is that for all its attempts to replicate the great movies of the 1940s, it fails miserably.
Full Review
| Original Score: D-
There's a line between homage and mimicry, and Soderbergh has crossed it.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.5/4
Fayetteville Free Weekly
The Good German is the bad movie. Except for the ambience -- the look of the film -- it stumbles awkwardly on every level.
Full Review
| Original Score: 1.0/5
Slant Magazine
It's a political tale with no significant contemporary reverberations, a turgid espionage-tinged romance with no soul, and a play-it-again aesthetic showpiece without a point.
Full Review
| Original Score: 1/4
FilmsInReview.com
The music and story are lousy. I'm calling for a Clooney-Soderbergh divorce.
Flipside Movie Emporium
An interesting stunt rather than a successful film.
Full Review
| Original Score: C
PopMatters
No matter that it's based on a book, the movie is more about how the reality of the time was seen through the lens of a Michael Curtiz while he was filming "Casablanca".
Full Review
| Original Score: 5/10
The Good German has little of the luster, sheen and pictorial nuance of a top-flight Hollywood picture of the old school.
Steven Soderbergh attempts to resurrect the magic of classical Hollywood, principally by sucking out all the air, energy and pleasure from his own filmmaking.
| Original Score: 1.5/5
OhmyNews.com
Soderbergh has been having a helluva time matching his ambition with quality lately
Full Review
| Original Score: C+
The Good German is counterfeit coin in search of easy marks.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/4
Technically stunning but narratively and thematically hollow.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/4
