The Good German

The Good German is a drama set in Berlin in the summer of 1945, in the ruined city where the Allied powers are meeting at the Potsdam Conference. Jake Geismar, an American war correspondent, arrives to cover the talks, but his real reason for taking the assignment is to find Lena Brandt, a married German woman with whom he had an affair before the war. His private search becomes tangled with a murder case after an American soldier is found dead by a lake near the conference, and the death is one the occupying authorities would rather not investigate. Jake's driver, Tully, is a black marketeer, and his connections draw Jake deeper into dealings that reach across the American and Soviet sectors.

Steven Soderbergh directed the film, the thirteenth of the thirty-five features listed for him, following Eros and preceding Ocean's Thirteen, from a screenplay by Paul Attanasio. George Clooney plays Jake Geismar, Cate Blanchett plays Lena Brandt, and Tobey Maguire plays Tully; Beau Bridges, Tony Curran and Leland Orser also appear among a credited cast of thirty-six.

The film was made for about 32 million US dollars and took roughly 6 million worldwide, a substantial shortfall. On IMDb it holds 6 out of 10 from around 27,000 votes, and on TMDB 5.8 out of 10 from 365 votes, while the critics' rating stands at 5.5 out of 10 from 153 reviews, leaving it below the audience scores on both sites.