One of mainstream cinema's most tirelessly inventive directors, Steven Soderbergh delivers another big-budget stylistic experiment with THE GOOD GERMAN. This time around, Soderbergh's target is 1940s film noir. Set in postwar Berlin, the atmospheric thriller is based on the acclaimed novel by Joseph Kanon. Frequent Soderbergh collaborator George Clooney plays Jake Geismer, an American military journalist who has returned to Berlin for the Potsdam Peace Conference. Jake's driver, Tully (Tobey Maguire), appears innocent upon first glance, but is in fact a major player in the corrupt Berlin underworld. He's also dating Jake's former flame, Lena Brandt (Cate Blanchett), whose beauty continues to torment Jake. When Tully's cadaver washes ashore one day, Jake is shocked to discover that nobody wants to go public with the news. As much as he'd like to forget about Lena, he can't. Pretty soon, he's risking his life to help her flee the country.

In shooting THE GOOD GERMAN, Soderbergh employed many of the actual filmmaking techniques that were used in the 1940s: black-and-white cinematography, elaborately constructed sets, wide master shots, and a sweeping score (compliments of Thomas Newman). The result is a film that looks and feels like it was made in a much earlier era, yet which contains the graphic language and content of an R-rated early 21st-century production.

Theatrical Release: December 15, 2006

DVD Features:

Region 1
Keep Case
Single Side - Dual Layer
Full Frame - 1.33
Audio:
Dolby Surround 5.1 - English, Spansh, French/Quebequois,
Dolby Surround Stereo 2.0 - English
Subtitles - English - Closed Captioned
Subtitles - English, French/Quebequois, Spanish - Optional

George Clooney: American actor/director
Cate Blanchett: Australian Actress
Beau Bridges: American actor, THE FABULOUS BAKER BOYS (1989)
Tobey Maguire: American actor, THE CIDER HOUSE RULES/SPIDER-MAN series
Tony Curran: Actor, LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN (2003)

Steven Soderbergh: Director/Screenwriter, TRAFFIC (2000)

Gregory Jacobs: Producer, FULL FRONTAL (2002)
Ben Cosgrove: Executive Producer, CRIMINAL (2004)

Paul Attanasio: screenwriter, "Quiz Show" & "Donnie Brasco"

Thomas Newman: Composer

3.5 stars out of 5 -- "[T]he movie works on its own, with a gleam of seductive corruption....The actors all come up with aces....It's pure moviegoing bliss."
"It vividly recreates the soundstage artifice of Warner Bros' wartime noirs -- replete with melodramatic dynamics but minus the restrictive gentility of 1940s Hollywood."
4 stars out of 5 -- "[W]ith Blanchett channelling Marlene Dietrich in an extraordinary performance....Clooney reins it in, playing it with suitably blunt bemusement..."
4 stars out of 5 -- "Steven Soderbergh continues his genre-cruising career with this stylised b/w tribute to '40s noir..."
"Soderbergh has re-created not only the kind of story told in the 1940s, but the kind of technical production Hollywood gloried in more than half a century ago, too." -- Grade: B