‘Allied’ Blue-ray Review: Brad Pitt Film Asks ‘Who Is the Enemy?’

Allied, directed by Robert Zemeckis, is an unconventional spy film. It attempts to redefine the conceptions of enemy and ally. Brad Pitt stars as, Max Vatan, a British intelligence agent during WWII who falls in love with and marries a woman from within the international intelligence community, Marianne Beauséjour (Marion Cotillard), after collaborating with her in a mission in Casablanca, Morocco. The main plot of the movie, however, doesn’t begin until the second half of the movie when the trustworthiest of Vatan’s wife is brought into question by Vatan’s military superiors.

The movie opens up as Vatan arrives in Casablanca, Morocco, and meets Marianne who has already infiltrated Casablanca high-society in the guise of a young sociable wife. Together the two spies take up the identity of a French couple, developing an intimate relationship in the process, as they vie to get an invitation to a gala where they plan to kill the guest of honor, the German ambassador.

Wanting more than their forged wedding, Vat proposes after the successful mission, and the two marry and begin a family in London. It’s a conventional happy ending to any thriller, but the story only gains more depth from this point.

Having spent quite some time in marital bliss, Vatan is shaken when he is called into his higher-ups office and informed that his wife is the main suspect in a German spy circuit. He refuses to wait silently over the weekend as British central intelligence agents set up a trap. Vatan does his own sleuthing to confirm that the relationship he has build with Marianne is real, reflecting on the Casablanca mission where she stated that she stays alive because her feelings are “always real” in her undercover missions.

From this point on, everyone in the film can be interpreted as an enemy. Vatan becomes an enemy to the British state as he abuses his military status to gather more information on his wife, putting inferiors in unnecessary risk in order to find proof that she is not an impostor. The British state is subsequently a threat to Vatan’s and Marianne’s family life in London. Marianne is a potential enemy to them all.

WARNING SPOILERS BEYOND THIS POINT: Before the British intelligence agents can get the results to the trap set on Marrianne, Vatan figures out the truth. She turns out to have been working for the Germans in Casablanca but she  ensures feelings are real. Marianne reveals that she is being coerced by her former employers to leak information and that their infant daughter is being used as leverage for her compliance.

Vatan abandons the unforgiving protocol which sates that he must kill his wife and after killing the members of the German circuit that coerced Marianne, he attempts to flee with her by plane. The pair are intercepted by government forces. This is where the conventional spy story begins to stray. Vatan does not pull out some impossible gravity-defying fight sequence in order to save the day. They do not ride out in a blaze of gun-fire and slain allies. There is no attempt to outwit the massive number of military personal that surrounds them. While Vatan seems adamant to try anything, Marianne simply accepts her fate. She tells her husband she loves him and shoots herself in the head, so that their daughter will only have to lose one parent. In that moment her true feelings for her family are affirmed. While an interesting twist for a spy film, it does play on the troupe of the self-sacrificing mother. The depiction of Marianne of the cunning, sassy, and intelligent spy that prevails the first arc of the movie, all but disappears in the second where she becomes a damsel in distress. While the twist is interesting, the way it is delivered disappoints.

The Blue-ray/DVD includes an image gallery which includes shots from behind-the-scenes, and a closer look at costume and production design. It also includes bonus footage on the directing process and costume-making among others.

Those who want to see something new in a spy movie may enjoy what Allied brings to the table.