Deeply nostalgic moviemaking is rendered with digital precision in Robert Zemeckis’ highly manicured World War II romance “Allied.”
Zemeckis’ control of his camera is absolute, if self-consciously so. In “Allied,” with Brad Pitt and Marion Cotillard, he has resurrected the espionage thriller in all its classical glamour with a knowingness that’s both impressively grand and stiffly hollow. The crisp period images of “Allied” never feel far removed from their storyboards. “Allied,” despite its high-wattage stars, feels a bit like an R-rated “Tintin.”
For Zemeckis, the director of “Back to the Future” and “Cast Away,” the distance between animation and live-action is little to none, and beside the point, anyway. He has lately, with “The Walk,” “Flight” and now “Allied,” been on a laudable mission to re-empower the big-screen drama with well-crafted, special effects-assisted spectacles that project human-sized stories onto widescreen canvases.
“Allied,” big and sturdy, always fills the screen. But its gleaming surfaces are missing something underneath.