Black Book

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Black Book ★★★½ Zwartboek 2006 (R)

Wow—Verhoeven directs his first film in his native Netherlands in 20 years and comes up with an unsentimental WWII thriller with a compelling lead performance by van Houten. In 1944, Jewish Rachel has been hiding out in the country until she joins a Dutch resistance unit. After some cosmetic changes, and now renamed Ellis, she's assigned to bed Gestapo chief Ludwig Muentze (Koch) and ferret out some Nazi secrets. What Rachel/Ellis doesn't mean to do is fall in love. The story twists and turns (eventually ending up in Israel in 1956) but is definitely worth the journey. English, Dutch, German, and Hebrew with subtitles. 145m/C DVD, Bluray Disc . GB BE GE NL Sebastian Koch, Thom Hoffman, Halina Reijn, Derek de Lint, Carice van Houten, Waldemar Kobus, Christian Berkel, Peter Blok; D: Paul Verhoeven; W: Paul Verhoeven, Gerard Soeteman; C: Karl Walter Lindenlaub; M: Anne Dudley.