Allied

During World War II, on a covert operation in Casablanca, a Canadian military intelligence officer (Brad Pitt) and a French Resistance fighter (Marion Cotillard) fall in love and later marry back in London—then suspicions arise that she’s a German spy. Crisply written by Steven Knight and slickly directed by Robert Zemeckis, the movie rashly invites an obvious comparison, but there’s only one Casablanca. Still, this solemn, romantic melodrama bears up under the comparison surprisingly well; Pitt and Cotillard have classic movie-star chemistry, and the picture, for all its state-of-the-art CGI, deftly evokes the look and style of 1940s wartime movie-making, with everything ending exactly as it should. Jared Harris, Simon McBurney, Lizzy Caplan and Matthew Goode round out the rather sparse supporting cast. J.L.