While in post-war Berlin to cover the Potsdam Conference, an American military journalist is drawn into a murder investigation which involves his former mistress and his driver.
A recovering gambling addict attempts to reconcile with his family and friends but finds trouble and temptation when caught between feelings for his ex-wife and her dangerous hoodlum boyfriend.
Director:
Steven Soderbergh
Stars:
Peter Gallagher,
Elisabeth Shue,
Alison Elliott
The U.S. government decides to go after an agro-business giant with a price-fixing accusation, based on the evidence submitted by their star witness, vice president-turned-informant Mark Whitacre.
Berlin, July, 1945. Journalist Jake Geismer arrives to cover the Potsdam conference, issued a captain's uniform for easier passage. He also wants to find Lena, an old flame who's now a prostitute desperate to get out of Berlin. He discovers that the driver he's assigned, a cheerful down-home sadist named Corporal Tully, is Lena's keeper. When the body of a murdered man washes up in Potsdam (within the Russian sector), Jake may be the only person who wants to solve the crime: U.S. personnel are busy finding Nazis to bring to trial, the Russians and the Americans are looking for German rocket scientists, and Lena has her own secrets.Written by
<jhailey@hotmail.com>
Tully wears a hat with a silver border trim. This is an officer's hat, but Tully is clearly enlisted. See more »
Quotes
Bernie Teitel:
This guy? Drove one of the gas vans. They'd load the Jews in back, run the exhaust inside.
Bernie Teitel:
[inhales]
By the time they got where they were going, they were already dead. Very efficient. Driving to work, he killed more people than Al Capone in all his years in Chicago. But if you asked him, he isn't a murderer, he's a truck driver. And he still thinks that.
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Crazy Credits
All the logos appear in black and white, while the Warner Brothers logo appears in the forties old style See more »
This movie is a complete distortion of an excellent book, which I happened to read when I was in Berlin. Characters are combined, distorted and outright eliminated. Sure, it's filmed in film noir style. Big deal. Without character motivation, consistency and background, this film is a total waste. The acting was wooden, the music was melodramatic, the dialog was lame, and the plot was utterly incomprehensible as filmed. I urge anyone who has some interest in reading a great mystery that was researched thoroughly and written in a suspenseful way to get a copy and check it out. I loved this book - I hated the movie.
Give it a miss.
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This movie is a complete distortion of an excellent book, which I happened to read when I was in Berlin. Characters are combined, distorted and outright eliminated. Sure, it's filmed in film noir style. Big deal. Without character motivation, consistency and background, this film is a total waste. The acting was wooden, the music was melodramatic, the dialog was lame, and the plot was utterly incomprehensible as filmed. I urge anyone who has some interest in reading a great mystery that was researched thoroughly and written in a suspenseful way to get a copy and check it out. I loved this book - I hated the movie.
Give it a miss.