Allied is a 2016 romantic thriller film directed by Robert Zemeckis and written by Steven Knight set during World War 2. It stars Brad Pitt as a Canadian intelligence officer and Marion Cotillard as a French Resistance fighter and collaborator, who fall in love during a mission in Casablanca. Jared Harris, Simon McBurney and Lizzy Caplan also star.
It’s 1942 and World War 2 is ranging on in Europe. Royal Canadian Air Force Intelligence Officer Max Vatan travels to Casablanca in Morocco to assassinate the German ambassador. He is partnered with a French Resistance fighter named Marianne Beauséjour, who had escaped from France after her resistance group was compromised and killed. They are posing as a married couple and Marianne is introducing him to her new friends in the German camp. Trusted by the Germans, she secures Max an invitation to the party where they plan to conduct the assassination. The two become close despite the danger involved and become intimate the day of the assassination. At the party, aided by a planned distraction, the mission goes well and they kill the ambassador and escape to London. The two get married, settle down in Hampstead, and have a baby girl named Anna. Max takes a desk job for the Allied Forces.
A year later Max is called in by the Special Operations Executive and informed that Marianne is suspected of being a German spy, having adopted her identity after the real Marianne was killed in France. When Max presses, they tell him that two missions that passed his desk were spoiled by the Germans, possibly tipped off by a spy who also knew of the missions. Max having told his wife of the missions is appalled by the accusations but is forced to go along with the plan to write down a piece of false intelligence at home, where Marianne can find it. If the information is picked up from intercepted German transmissions, Max must personally execute her, or be hanged for treason. Max is told otherwise to act normally. He finds it difficult but goes along with the rouse. But he also contacts a former British officer who is said to have known Marrianne – but he is unable to confirm her identity as he has been blinded in a battle.
Max then seeks out a young pilot named Adam Hunter, gives him a picture of his wife, and instructs him to ask French resistance fighter Paul Delamare, a former team member of Marianne’s whether, she really is Marianne. However, the following night, Max’s commanding officer Frank Heslop informs him that Hunter was killed while waiting on the ground for the answer. The following night Max takes the place of a Lysander pilot and flies to France to meet with Delamare, who, it transpires, is being held at the local police station. Max and the resistance break into the jail to confront Delamare. He is drunk, but remembers that Marianne was a beautiful pianist. Max comes back home and takes Marianne to a pub in the morning, breaks in and demands that she play him something on the piano. She cannot and adits that she was a German spy who took on the identity of Marianne after the former was killed. She claims her feelings for Max are genuine and that she and her child were being threatened by German spies in London, including the woman who lives around the corner and often looks after Anna.
Convinced of her feelings for him Max takes Marianne with him, confronts and kills the two German handlers and drives to an airfield. At the airfield his superior, Frank Heslop, confronts Max and with more soldiers coming, doesn’t let Max leave. Marianne tells Max that she loves him, asks him to take care of Anna, then shoots herself. Heslop orders the soldiers present to report that Max executed Marianne as per his orders, so that Max himself will not be punished. After the war, Max moves to the ranch in Medicine Hat, Alberta, Canada, that was always his ambition, and raises Anna. The film ends with Marianne reading the letter that she had earlier written to her daughter, anticipating that one day her real identity would be uncovered.
Slow moving at times, the movie could have been really intense but is instead a slow burner that is held well by the acting ability of the two main leads. The setting in Canary Islands made to look like 1940s Casablanca and in London are great as well. 7.5 outta 10!
