Shining Through

Shining Through is a 1992 wartime drama set in New York and Berlin around the start of the Second World War. Linda Voss, a working-class New Yorker who speaks fluent German, takes a job at a law office and gradually realizes that her employer, Ed Leland, is not the man he pretends to be but an intelligence officer. The two become involved, and when the United States enters the war, Linda volunteers to go undercover in Germany. Her assignment is to gather information, but she also has a personal reason for making the journey: her mother was German, and she wants to learn what has happened to her Jewish relatives there.

David Seltzer wrote and directed the film, his third feature after Lucas and Punchline. Michael Douglas plays Leland and Melanie Griffith plays Linda, with Liam Neeson, Joely Richardson, John Gielgud and Hansi Jochmann among the supporting cast. The production, backed by 20th Century Fox among others, carried a budget of 35 million dollars and returned 44 million dollars worldwide.

Audience reactions are mild: on IMDb the film holds 6.4 out of 10 from around 12,000 votes, and on TMDB 6.5 out of 10 from roughly 230 votes. A critics' rating of 4.6 out of 10 from 17 reviews places it clearly below those audience scores.