Paul Verhoeven is an odd guy, I'm not totally sure how he's perceived in Hollywood but I'm sure to most people he's the Dutch guy that makes big-screen soft core porn movies. Verhoeven's Hollywood career has been chequered, with most of his films wavering  between the aforementioned porn and intensely violent action films with a undercurrent of satire. In one hand he holds crap like 'Showgirls' and 'Basic Instinct' which barely even qualify for the 'so-bad-they're-good' category and with the other he holds gems like 'Robocop' and 'Starship Troopers'. The thing most cinema goers are unaware of is that he made some really interesting films before he hit the states, normally starring his man of the hour Rutger Hauer; 'Soldier of Orange', 'A girl called Katy Tippel' and 'Turkish Delight'. 

By returning to his roots Verhoeven has made a really great World War 2 drama that follows the story of  Rachel Steinn (Carice Van Houten) a young Jewish singer who's hiding place in the occupied north of Holland is destroyed by a stray bomb and so decides to cross the Biesbosch and flee to the liberated south. When the crossing goes tragically wrong Rachel Stein is forced back into the occupied north and is recruited by the resistance. With her feminine charms being of great asset to the resistance Rachel is sent undercover to seduce the head of the Gestapo Ludwig Müntze (Sebastian Koch).

It's easy to presume from the trailer that 'Black Book' is a harrowing World War 2 film, with touches of 'Downfall' and 'Schindler's List' while in fact the tone is much lighter than that, and switches smoothly between 'mission movie' and 'tragi-drama' without missing a beat. I went into the film with very few preconceptions and that was absolutely the best way to view it, as what was presented to me really surprised me and kept me gripped to the screen for the entire 2 hours.

Verhoeven is obviously back in his element and has a real story to chew on for a change. The plot is nicely paced, but does has a tendency to be overly convoluted in places with characters uttering something early in the film and paying it off at a later point. You see these pay-off's coming a mile away but it never overly detracts from the plot that keeps ticking over. As fluffy as the story can get at times it's still holds up, with some nicely rounded characters adding texture to the contrivances taking place around them (Carice Van Houten is stand out in the lead).

You can overlook trite elements of the plot because Verhoeven rarely missteps with direction and handles drama and action well.  What annoys is Verhoeven's penchant for eroticism, especially when it's largely uncalled for. Don't get me wrong I like nudity as much as the next person, but when I'm watching members of the Dutch resistance prepare for a dangerous mission into Gestapo headquarters it seems odd for them to suddenly start doing the two-bear-mambo. Verhoeven has always done this, most laughably in Showgirls and it rarely adds anything. I compare it to Gus Van Sant putting token homosexuality into his films; Elephant, the two killers have sex before they storm the school. Were the killers gay in real life? no, so what does it add?

Despite the occasional 'Tinto Brass'/'Red Shoe Diaries' moment the film goes a long way to talk about the role of women living in occupied europe during the war, that did what they had to do to survive. The film deals with the unseen shades of grey of who was good and who was evil during the period, which all adds an intimate human side to what could have been an otherwise by-the-numbers war thriller.

Verhoeven is always going to have his quirks as a film maker but has at least partially redeemed himself for his recent cinematic crimes, and for once I am actually looking forward to see what he's going to do next.

Black Book is on limited release in the UK from today (January the 19th) and arrives in the states on March 9th.