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Black Book
Sony Pictures Classics


7.9

based on 34 reviews
Read critic reviews
How did we calculate this?

based on 35 votes
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FILM:

MPAA RATING: R for some strong violence, graphic nudity, sexuality and language

Starring Carice van Houten, Sebastian Koch, Thom Hoffman, Halina Reijn, Waldemar Kobus, Derek de Lint, Christian Berkel, and Dolf de Vries

Set in Holland during World War II, this is the story of a Jewish singer who joins the resistance against the Nazis.

GENRE(S):	Foreign \| Suspense/Thriller \| War
WRITTEN BY:	Gerard Soeteman Paul Verhoeven
DIRECTED BY:	Paul Verhoeven
RELEASE DATE:	DVD: September 25, 2007 Theatrical: April 4, 2007
RUNNING TIME:	145 minutes, Color
ORIGIN:	Netherlands / Belgium / UK / Germany
LANGUAGE(S):	Dutch / English / German / Hebrew (with English subtitles)

Original title "Zwartboek"

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...

100

Premiere Glenn Kenny

Black Book is Verhoeven's best film since "RoboCop": audacious, smart, shamelessly entertaining.

100

Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum

Like much of Verhoeven's best work, it's shamelessly melodramatic, but in its dark moral complexities it puts "Schindler's List" to shame. Van Houten and Sebastian Koch (The Lives of Others) are only two of the standouts in an exceptional cast.

100

Baltimore Sun Chris Kaltenbach

In less accomplished hands, Black Book could have been a hopeless mishmash. But Verhoeven proves a sure-handed storyteller, which might come as a surprise, as well as a terrific visual stylist, which shouldn't.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold

A highly original and progressively riveting personal adventure.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Noel Murray

In the end, Black Book may be one of the most fun movies ever made about how people basically suck.

The Hollywood Reporter Ray Bennett

It succeeds on almost all fronts. The epic film is a high-octane adventure rooted in fact with a raft of arresting characters, big action sequences and twists and turns galore.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

Black Book possesses a taut, exciting script that throws surprises at the viewer on a regular basis.

TV Guide Maitland McDonagh

While Rachel's story is fiction, many of its incidents are rooted in historical events carefully researched by Soeteman and the film's briskly staged action and stunning reversals of fortune ensure that its two and a half hours fly by.

USA Today Claudia Puig

A hard-core war film with raw violence, intense action, graphic sexuality and a twisting plot that offers a series of surprises.

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

Just for starters, no movie about the Dutch Resistance during World War II has any right to be this wildly entertaining, not to mention this provocative and potently erotic.

Chicago Tribune Michael Wilmington

The movie scrambles our responses and covers so much ground, with such zest, that its two and a half hours race past like a firestorm.

Boston Globe Ty Burr

Black Book takes the conventions of the WWII epic -- the prison breaks, the interrogation scenes -- and undermines them with craft and muscle and the ripe lack of restraint we've come to expect from this director.

Film Threat Don R. Lewis

Carice van Houten as Rachel/Ellis is as captivating as any screen siren working today.

Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern

Black Book is its own kind of thriller. The film is filled with the genre's conventions -- suspense, betrayal, melodrama, violence, music -- and it's hugely enjoyable from start to finish.

New York Magazine David Edelstein

I urge you not to pass up Black Book, especially on a wide screen. It's a marvelous movie-movie, with a new screen goddess. Van Houten has a soft, heart-shaped face on top of a body so naturally, ripely beautiful it has its own kind of truth.

Village Voice J. Hoberman

Black Book, which takes its title from a secret list of Dutch collaborators, is an impressively old-fashioned yet fashionably embittered movie.

Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan

As epic as its two-hours-and-25-minute running time indicates, Black Book is as subversive as it is traditional, both enamored of conventional notions of heroism and frankly contemptuous of them.

Variety Derek Elley

Moves like an express train across almost 2½ hours without any sense of rush and with strong, empathetic characters etched en route.

Austin Chronicle Marrit Ingman

The action set-pieces, double crosses, and narrow escapes are handsomely mounted and suspenseful as a Saturday matinee.

Christian Science Monitor Peter Rainer

The action is nonstop and often harrowing and well staged. But van Houten, while a charmer, doesn't adequately convey the disgust (and connivance) that her character would inevitably feel in such a situation.

San Francisco Chronicle Ruthe Stein

Van Houten, a veteran of European TV, is in almost every scene, and her energetic performance keeps Black Book percolating despite an overstuffed plot that strains credibility and often tips over into melodrama.

Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez

Black Book takes a brave, if odd, approach to a WWII historical drama, but one thing is certain: No one in the theater will be bored.

Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea

Black Book doesn't let the grim facts of the Holocaust get in the way of some ripping pulp.

Salon.com Andrew O'Hehir

It's a messy, colorful big-screen entertainment that veers from sober period piece to outrageous melodrama, which is to say it's a Verhoeven movie.

Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum

Black Book may be the looniest use of the Holocaust as a playground since Roberto Benigni served up his infernal clown act in "Life Is Beautiful."

New York Daily News Jack Mathews

Like Stone in "Basic Instinct," van Houten has an audacity to match Verhoeven's. Hers is a role that Bette Davis would have killed Ingrid Bergman for, and she is so good in it that it seems only a matter of time before she'll star in a real Hollywood movie - as opposed to this pretender.

New York Post Kyle Smith

On the one hand, Black Book has the artiness of subtitles, the dramatic weight of history, and the desperate heroics of Jews hiding from Nazis. On the other hand, it has Paul Verhoeven.

Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy

The storytelling -- the script is co-written by Verhoeven's old collaborator Gerard Soeteman -- is messy, and the result never feels real or human or vital.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Rick Groen

This is a film that dearly wants to be important, that wants to do for Holland what Irene Nemirovsky's "Suite Française" does for France - examine the German occupation through a prism of painful honesty. Yet the lofty ambition comes dressed in cheap attire; Verhoeven can't seem to stop himself from shopping downmarket.

The New York Times Manohla Dargis

Black Book works only if you take it for the pulpiest of fiction, not a historical gloss, its stated claims to "true events" notwithstanding.

Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman

The storytelling is inept and illogical.

Washington Post Stephen Hunter

The new Dutch film Black Book manages to turn World War II into a large piece of cheese. A lurid, pulpy, slightly perverse potboiler, the movie suffers mainly from its utter lack of seriousness.

The New Yorker Anthony Lane

This is trash pretending to serve the cause of history: a "Dirty Dozen" knockoff with one eye on "Schindler’s List."

LA Weekly Ella Taylor

A viscerally effective thriller ends up a repugnant exercise in moral relativism, delivered with the grandstanding swagger of the self-styled provocateur.

The average user rating for this movie is 7.9 (out of 10) based on 35 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

[Anonymous] gave it a9:
Strong, exciting, visually superb, but sort of James Bondish. Outstanding entertainment with significant sadness.

Jack S. gave it an8:
A very silly melodrama. Lots of gunfights in which dozens of heroes and German soldiers get killed, lots of bare breast and a story line like naked snake wrestling. Therefore, a very watch-worthy flick. Heh.

Mark W gave it a3:
Black Book may be the most overrated film of 2007. While getting past stereotypical cartoon Nazis and saintly resistance fighters is a worthy goal, this melodrama is little more than a well acted soap opera. Carice van Houten's performance makes this film mildly entertaining, and may account for so many reviews seeing more in this mess than is actually delivered.

Caroline k. gave it a2:
Terrible film - a very complicated plot that was not explained well. Hated the scene with all the poo just unnecessary.

John T. gave it a3:
A very silly melodrama. Lots of gunfights in which dozens of heroes and german soldiers get killed, lots of bare breast and a story line like naked snake wrestling.

Shirley R. gave it a10:
Liked it better than "The Lives of Others". First rate-must see. Very well written, acted and grabs you right away, then doesn't disappoint. Will see it again to catch all the little clues along the way.

Greg S. gave it a10:
Run! Do not pass go! This is a brilliant film, well written, incredibly photographed and with carefully selected actors who pour their hearts and abilities into their complex characters. It is our film of the year. The Canadian references are especially appreciated. The crowds scenes, the intimacies, the brutalities and the twists and turns of the plot kept us caught up in the time and tragedy of the occupation of Holland. Any one giving this a Yellow vote fails to appreciate the true significance of this masterpiece. A film to be seen over and over.

Black Book Sony Pictures Classics

Black Book
Sony Pictures Classics