This Movie Can Only Be Described With One Word.

It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.

One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.

Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

This was so god-awful, a tacky exploitation film wrapped in a virtuous package about a Jewish woman in World War II Holland working with the Resistance. It had nothing to do with any of that. It's the exact same cliché-ridden formula of every stupid, violent, sexist action film that is churned out by the dozen every year. You could stick the plot and the characters in any setting, any time period and it would be exactly the same. I really despair for the intelligence of the IMDb community--this movie was so dumb, so cheesy, words just fail me. Plus it was extremely insulting to Jews and women, SPOILER ALERT: as if a Jewish woman who'd seen her entire family mowed down by the Gestapo would fall in love with the head of the Gestapo????!!!! Give me a f...ing break!!!

An excellent rendition of the plight of the Dutch, especially those of Jewish descent, under Nazi occupation. Most Jews did not survive under Nazi occupation and this is the story of a woman determined not only to survive but to avenge the atrocities of the SS and Gestapo.Most English-speaking viewers will need the English subtitles to follow the film. Being a Dutch film, the Dutch language is of course flawless and the occasional smattering of English as well.My only gripe is that whereas a large part of the film is spoken in German, the language is often spoken very poorly, both in terms of pronunciation and grammar. For example, it is common in most of the Netherlands to leave the "n" silent in infinitives and plurals ending in "en", but this is not the case in German. Nevertheless, this central Netherlands affectation gets applied equally to the German-speaking passages in the film. In addition, most of the Dutch actors struggle excessively with German nouns. Most irritating was "das Vleugel" which should be "der Fluegel". No excuse, given that vleugel isn't a neuter in Dutch either. Another example: "aufmachen" (infinitive) is used where the imperative ("mach auf") is required instead.Apart from that distraction, which non-reasonable-German-speaking viewers won't be afflicted by, it is a good story with plenty of suspense and is well acted.

In 1956 Israel, Rachel Stein (Carice van Houten) remembers his war years in Holland starting in Sept 1944. When an allied bomber accidentally destroyed her hiding place, she tries to escape to liberated territories. The escaping Jews get caught and massacred but Rachel survives. She is rescued by the resistance and gets into dangerous operations. Eventually she infiltrates the Nazi world.Director Paul Verhoeven is bringing Nazis, Holocaust, and resistance fully into erotic violent pulp territories. It is unabashed in its noir thriller mentality. There is something oddly unreal about it. The last act has a few too many unnecessary twists, but it's nevertheless compelling and exciting.

This movie needs to be taken with huge grain of salt if you don't want to tear your hair out while watching it.I suppose it depends on what sort of expectations you have beforehand, but that can really always be used to defend a movie, as well as argue for differing viewer's experiences, much like the fact that many of us have varying tastes in movies. However, I think some things can be more or less objectively agreed upon by people who appreciate the art of film and cinema.The suspension of disbelief required for this movie to make any kind of lasting impression is MASSIVE. The script feels unfinished, almost as if the rough draft that outlined the films events was passed for a finished product. Where major plot development or emotional discharge is expected, the acting performances fall short and disappoint time and again.Where do I even begin to exemplify this? I felt like every three minutes something in this movie irritated me to the point that I almost gave up watching it. Was it the jolly and utterly unconvincingly acted coincidental reunion of a Jewish woman with her family after being separated by years of Nazi occupation? Or the lack of emotional burden expressed by her at the equally sudden death of said family moments later vis-a-vis the hysteric attack that ensues after she learns of the execution of her Nazi officer lover, Captain Muntze? Or maybe the blind trust placed by Dutch Resistance fighters in said Captain, who after sleeping with our undercover Jewish heroine turns out to be a very compassionate and helpful guy despite years of service to the Reich? Or possibly the ease with which a Canadian commander, having liberated a Dutch town, is persuaded to comply with a German military tribunal sentence by a NAZI GENERAL, and the crime was NOT carrying out retributions towards FAMILIES OF DUTCH RESISTANCE FIGHTERS? Yes, and there was more, much more.When the main lead, who by the way is infiltrating a Nazi HQ in order to get back at the enemy, reveals her affiliation with Dutch Resistance to an obviously promiscuous female co-worker of ambiguous loyalty and weak character, you know someone doesn't give two shits about contextual credibility. Even though the setting and premise of the film are interesting, it all becomes irrelevant through it's lack of depth or exploration of...anything. The films pace gives the impression that it was cut by a person with severe ADD who got bored with the scene they were working on between 5 and 10 minutes into it and just wanted to move on to the next one. I mean, when you can't even make a love scene reflect the sexual interest of at least one of the two people about engage in love-making, there really isn't much going for you by that point.This movie was a joke, a bad one too, and I don't see how this can be classified as one of Paul Verhoeven's so-called "satirical" works, thus somehow making it less terrible(?) Anyone who says that should stop talking, because you can't talk me into thinking you actually believe that poppycock. If you have any reverence for the time-period and the genre, you will probably feel the same way I do. If this movie was based on real events, as it states, then I hope it was based on them with a substantial amount of deviation from them.