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| Black Book | 
 enlarge | Director: Paul Verhoeven
Actors: Carice Van Houten, Sebastian Koch, Thom Hoffman, Halina Reijn, Waldemar Kobus
Studio: Sony Pictures
Category: DVD
List Price: $14.94
Buy New: $6.50
You Save: $8.44 (56%)
Buy New/Used/Collectible from $6.50
Avg. Customer Rating:  (92 reviews)
Sales Rank: 1339
Format: Ac-3, Color, Dolby, Dvd-video, Subtitled, Widescreen, Ntsc
Languages: Dutch (Original Language), English (Original Language), German (Original Language), Hebrew (Original Language), English (Subtitled), Spanish (Subtitled), French (Subtitled)
Rating: R (Restricted)
Media: DVD
Running Time: 146 minutes
Number Of Items: 1
Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1
Dimensions (in): 7.5 x 5.3 x 0.6
MPN: COLD18495D
UPC: 043396184954
EAN: 0043396184954
ASIN: B000TGCR38
Release Date: September 25, 2007
Theatrical Release Date: 2006
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews:
 Has all the right ingredients, perfectly crafted! February 27, 2008
4 out of 5 found this review helpful
Now I am not going to call this a MASTERPIECE FILM by any stretch of the imagination, but as a commercial, mass-entertainment thriller it simply does everything right. Namely:
1. Solid acting, directing, and dialogue: nothing to make you say, "puh-leeeez!" and choke or gag on your popcorn as often happens in your typical high-cheese, big-budget Hollywood thriller, especially in their last 10 minutes or so.
2. An engagingly original and unpredictable plot and characters: will not bore you to tears because everything that's going to happen in the film is systematically telegraphed/foreshadowed within the first 10 minutes, and the characters are not all a bunch of 2-dimensional cliches chosen by a Hollywood focus group.
3. Beautiful sets/locations and cinematography, and a very luscious Carice van Houten who is just as good an actress as she is a powerfully sexual and intoxicating woman, even though she has to dye her hair blonde during the movie.
I have to giggle at the usual parade of prudish American reviewers here on Amazon who are (gasp!) shocked and offended by (gasp!) the perhaps half dozen all-too-fleeting, piddling nude (gasp!) and sexual (gasp!) scenes.
Actually, compared to Verhoeven's infamous "Basic Instinct" (a decent thriller, though a bit over the top sometimes) this film is just barely PG-13. The sexual scenes are not anywhere as prolonged or as graphic, and the nudity is tastefully done in a soft-light, airbrushed kind of way. There is one rather cute scene where van Houten is shown dying her pubes blonde, but all you see is fur, nothing else...sheesh! I would personally have preferred not to be subjected to full frontal and rear nudity of the one old, fat, pasty and hairy German officer (Franken), but that's just because I'd much rather look at the likes of Ms. Van Houten in her birthday suit, thanks very much!
Can't disagree with the many film critics who've hailed this as Paul Verhoeven's best works in many, many years. Mind-boggling that this is the same guy who made the abysmally God-awful "Showgirls" (1995)!
Just nevermind the prudes and the Bible-thumpers, they're kind of like mosquitoes in a swamp: unavoidable when you live in America.
Great movie! February 27, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This movie was entertaining from begining to end. Wonderful suspense and intrigue. I couldn't help but think that there must have been thousands of personal dramas like this one going on during WWII. I loved it. It's definately not a slick Hollywood production, but a great little movie.
Riveting February 6, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I don't remember a movie that kept me transfixed like this one. Even the subtitles didn't bother me. It was a wonderful and powerful film.
 Movie breaks the language barrier February 1, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
I generally hate subtitles and usually avoid movies that are subtitled. That being said, this movie is simply so good I forgot that it was in a different language. The story, plot, scenery is just simply excellent.
The video transfer is beautiful and is great HD for your set.
 entertaining but often preposterous war film January 30, 2008
6 out of 14 found this review helpful
"Black Book" may be based on a true story, but it often plays more like a corny wartime melodrama than a serious film about war. Suffice it to say, it has a lot of beautiful and glamorous people running around doing a lot of cloak-and-dagger espionage stuff - all while changing the course of history. That's not to say it isn't an enjoyable and entertaining picture, just that it doesn't rank up there in artistry and truth with the great European films about the Fascist era - classics like "Open City," "Forbidden Games," "The Cranes are Flying," "The Shop on Main Street," "Das Boot," etc. When you boil it down to the bare essentials, the theme of "Black Book" seems to be that there's nothing like a little hair coloring and a bar of chocolate to help an attractive young girl survive the horrors of war.
Rachel Stein is a beautiful Jewish singer whose entire family is mowed down by the Nazis as they are fleeing occupied Holland (Rachel and her family are Germans currently hiding out in the Netherlands). As the sole survivor of the attack, Rachel quickly becomes active in the Dutch resistance, her assignment being to cozy up to a high-ranking Gestapo officer who has taken a liking to her. Soon she finds herself not only in bed with the Nazi but quite possibly in love with him as well.
Paul Verhoeven has directed the film much in the style of his big-scale Hollywood productions ("Robocop," "Total Recall") - that is to say with a great deal of energy but not a lot of emotion. The convoluted storyline often becomes muddled and difficult to follow, but Verhoeven compensates for this weakness by keeping the proceedings moving at a breakneck pace (which is a good thing since the film takes an exhausting two hours and twenty-five minutes to tell its story). Unfortunately, the movie has been fitted with a musical score that sounds as if it has been lifted from some third-rate espionage thriller from the 1960's. Carice van Houten has brio and spunk as the movie's heroine, running around from one dire predicament and hairbreadth escape to another - she`s almost like a Dutch version of the perpetually imperiled Pauline - but most of the other actors simply get lost in the shuffle. And if you've ever doubted that chocolate is, indeed, the answer to all of life's problems, you will never do so again after seeing this movie.
I must say that, even though I enjoyed it immensely, "Black Book" is probably the first serious film about Nazis that actually had me chuckling at wholly inappropriate places (some of the actors even hold their guns in a funny way). "Black Book" may be a Dutch film by rights, but it`s strictly from Hollywood in its silliness and corn.
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