BOTTOM LINE: An effective thriller that keeps you guessing until the end, but let down by some over-the-top technical gimmicks and an overbearing musical score.

THE GOOD: "The Good German" comes as a refreshing change of pace; it's filmed like an old-style 40's classic, full frame and in black and white. The first minutes of this film are pieced-together newsreel footage which smartly segues in to a gripping thriller about an American Military Journalist Jake Geismer (an excellent George Clooney) is pulled in to a mystery surrounding an ex-Nazi who is being pursued by both the Americans and the Russians in post-war 1940's Berlin. The film is very much like an onion with each minute passing by revealing a new layer of intrigue. Cate Blanchett is excellent as the wife of the ex-Nazi, Lena Brandt, who also had an affair with Jake. Together they are drawn in to a bigger plot when Brandt's current lover, Patrick Tully (Tobey Maguire) tries to sell Brandt to the Russians for a large sum but ends up shot and washed up on a riverbank in Potsdam. What seems like a simple murder mystery turns out to be the first step in finding out a bigger mystery surrounding American and Russian interests in carving up the spoils, both land and people, of post-war Germany. There is a very strong film-noir taste to this film, helped heavily by being filmed in black and white. There has been a lot of attention to detail, with the post-war period of the piece recreated meticulously by the production. It feels like they really shot it at the end of World War II in Berlin. Movies aren't made like this any more. The cast across the board is excellent. Tobey Maguire is also surprisingly strong as the ambitious but foolish Tully, trying to make a fortune out of the war. All in all, despite a weak introductory first 10 minutes, the mystery at the heart of this film will pull you in and won't let you go until it's revealed, right in the final moments.

THE BAD: The filmmakers go a bit far in places with technique. It's filmed as a 40's film, yet there are some very glaring differences, including an overuse of the 'wipe' transition, some clumsy juxtoposition between footage filmed by the filmmakers and real footage shot at the time, and without a doubt, a very overbearing film score. There were times I wished I could switch off the music channel and just get the dialogue. If the filmmakers had cut back on these gimmicky techniques and gone with simplicity this film would have been a classic. Unfortunately, they make watching the film a bit annoying at times.