Verhoeven cleverly avoids conventional wartime good-guy vs. bad-guy storytelling [...] asserting that war makes people do things that may not be correct or righteous, but are compulsory to survival.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Mar 8, 2024

... a riveting World War II resistance thriller with a runaway pace and a gripping sense of peril.

| Jan 7, 2023

A genuinely epic war drama.

| Sep 8, 2022

Black Book may be Paul Verhoeven's most visceral film, and that's saying something.

| Jan 17, 2022

Verhoeven as a director has always blended arthouse and grindhouse aesthetics perfectly, and Black Book is a singular epic.

| Sep 10, 2021

Carice van Houten is a particularly strong lead, sucking the audience into her morbid world of perpetual torture and misfortune.

| Original Score: 8/10 | Nov 24, 2020

The film manages to turn German occupied Holland circa 1944 into a fast-paced thrill ride without sacrificing the emotional core and very real human toll.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Jul 6, 2019

... [Director Paul Verhoeven] revels in cinema's powers of deception, to conceal and then reveal reality, to cover subversive ideas inside the armour of genre.

| Oct 2, 2017

Seven years after he disappeared with the whimper that was Hollow Man, Paul Verhoeven has returned with what may be his best film.

| Apr 7, 2015

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | Nov 16, 2011

| Original Score: 2/5 | Nov 16, 2011

The handsomely mounted, heedlessly pulpy modernist World War II thriller that "The Good German" and "Valkyrie" failed to be - a dizzying rush of daring rescues, sexual intrigue, treachery, betrayal, gunfights, hasty conclusions and harrowing consequences.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Sep 25, 2010

It's the last thing a Verhoeven film should be: tasteful

| Aug 27, 2009

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 7, 2008

A slick, thrilling, trashy, melodramatic and serialesque soap opera adventure which conceals the complex tale of moral ambiguity beneath.

| Apr 18, 2008

While gleefully turning all prior war movie stereotypes on their heads, Verhoeven opts for the bizarre theory that ravishing designing women and lots of sex can change the course of world history.

| Mar 6, 2008

There are a lot of plot twists at the end of the film, maybe too many, but it will keep you guessing.

| Original Score: B | Jan 15, 2008

Verhoeven simplesmente mantém sua obsessão habitual com sexo e violência (geralmente combinando os dois), mas sem qualquer sofisticação narrativa ou visual.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Jan 12, 2008

It's engaging as an espionage thriller and as a story of courage and determination.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Jan 5, 2008

(...) A uno le parece estar viendo más un detrás de cámaras que una película en serio, esperando que el director grite "corten" en cualquier momento y que el equipo aplauda por lo bien que salió la toma.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Oct 30, 2007