Black Book: Movie Review, DVD Review, Blu-ray disc Review

From Paul Verhoeven, who always will be best known for directing “Basic Instinct” and "Showgirls," poor thing, comes “Black Book,” a tense film set at the end of World War II.

We're in the Netherlands, it's 1944 and the Jewish cabaret singer Rachel Stein (the excellent Carice van Houten) is trying to keep ahead of the Third Reich, which has gunned down her family in a bloody slaughter from which she barely escapes.

Now filled less with mourning than with rage and revenge, she joins the Resistance, dyes her hair blonde and becomes Ellis de Vries. Her job? Get close to Ludwig Muntze (Sebastian Koch), the attractive head of the Dutch Gestapo, and survive the harrowing journey that ensues. Since that journey is laced with sex, unexpected love, intrigue, guts and guns--sometimes colliding all at once--none of it proves easy, but just look at how coolly tough Rachel can be.

Some might say inhumanly so, but they’d be overlooking the inhuman times. As for the movie, it seethes with the hot thrust of a soap opera and the momentum it builds clashes to a crescendo.

Rated R. Grade: B+

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