When Stephen Spielberg resurrected the World War II war movie back in 1998 with "Saving Private Ryan," he did so by upping the level of battlefield intensity and perceived realism. One thing he didn't lose though, was the moral certainty that has long been a staple of the genre -- it's hard not feel righteous when your cinematic enemies are Nazis.
The mood has certainly shifted over the past decade, and the recent crop of World War II films has largely reflected this. Whether it's Clint Eastwood's "Flags of Our Fathers," Stephen Soderbergh's "The Good German" (forthcoming) or Roman Polanski's "The Pianist," these films have tried to move past the given dichotomies, and illuminate the moral complexities and dilemmas inherent in every conflict, questions that feel particularly pertinent these days.
Perhaps no film has gone further in that regard than Paul Verhoeven's "Black Book," a Dutch film that looks at the Nazi occupation of Holland and its aftermath. On one level, the film is pure popcorn entertainment, "The Diary Of Anne Frank" re-imagined with a post-Spielbergian aesthetic, with "Anne" a sexy spy femme fatale, sleeping her way into Gestapo headquarters. On another level, it's a troubling examination of who did what to survive, how postwar "justice" was rough and random, and how good can bleed into bad.