This romantic wartime thriller kicks off in a sumptuously shot Casablanca in 1942, with Brad Pitt’s intelligence officer teaming up with Cotillard’s French Resistance fighter to bump off a high-ranking Nazi. As they prepare for their mission, the pair fall in love, and it’s here the film encounters an insurmountable problem – as aesthetically pleasing as they both are, they have precisely zero romantic chemistry as a couple (somewhat ironic given the scurrilous gossip about their off-screen antics). However, Allied finds its feet as the action relocates to London, with a handful of gloriously overwrought set pieces, including the birth of a child in the middle of an air raid. A mid-point twist succeeds in ratcheting up the tension considerably, and Zemeckis’ skills as a purveyor of bombastic blockbuster entertainment really come to the fore.
Allied | Directed by Robert Zemeckis (UK, USA 2016) with Brad Pitt, Marion Cotillard. Start December 22