Verhoeven Re-Examines Dutch Resistance

Sunday Morning movie critic David Edelstein says Paul Verhoeven's new movie takes an unusual look at the storied Dutch resistance during World War II.

Take Paul Verhoeven: only a director with blood in his veins could make a film so flamboyantly, entertainingly god-awful as "Showgirls." Verhoeven is taken very seriously in some circles; I have colleagues who think "Showgirls" is an ironic masterpiece and his outer-space giant-bug war epic "Starship Troopers" a devastating satire. But I don't need to hide behind irony to rave about his new cloak-and-dagger thriller, "Black Book."

A little context: Verhoeven is 68 and grew up in Holland, where he made a splash with "Soldier of Orange." That's relevant to "Black Book" because that film also takes a distinctly anti-romantic view of his countrymen during the Second World War. After his juicy black-widow thriller "The Fourth Man," Verhoeven conquered Hollywood with the amazingly brutal "Robocop." Then came the ultimate black-widow film, the swank noir "Basic Instinct."

You might have gathered Verhoeven has a dark view of human nature. He once said, "The sooner we admit our capacity for evil, the less apt we are to destroy each other" — which is odd because his characters admit their capacity for evil and destroy each other like crazy.

"Black Book" is set in his native Holland under Nazi occupation and centers on a Jewish woman, played by the overpoweringly gorgeous Carice van Houten. After her family is betrayed to the Nazis, she ends up working for the Resistance. She dyes her hair blonde, goes undercover at Gestapo headquarters and seduces the head man, Muntze, played by Sebastian Koch. Most of Verhoeven's movies show women getting ahead by using their feminine wiles and hot bods, which here seems less sexist than bitterly realistic.

Filmmakers tend to drop to their knees whenever Nazis and Jews show up in the same movie, but Verhoeven's not paralyzed with solemnity. "Black Book" is lush, sexy, and shockingly revisionist. The Dutch who risk their lives to hide Jews are anti-Semites; Resistance fighters make secret deals with Germans. Verhoeven's countrymen are, understandably, angry, but I think his ambivalence makes the characters more human.

It's too bad in the last 20 minutes the director's trademark cynicism swamps "Black Book" to the point of absurdity — crosses, double-crosses, humanity at its most vile. Yet you still can't take your eyes off the thing. It's Verhoeven at peak form: a great piece of old-fashioned, linear storytelling, with killer curves.