"BLACK BOOK" (ZWARTBOEK," 2006, in Dutch and German with English subtitles) ..... A ... Dutch director Paul Verhoeven has returned to his native land to craft a powerful and very moving film from a script that he co-wrote with Gerard Soeteman. Verhoeven has spent decades in Hollywood cranking out crowd pleasers like "RoboCop," "Total Recall," and "Starship Troopers." He has also directed some B-movies like "Basic Instinct" and even a bomb like "Showgirls." As far as I am concerned, he can leave Hollywood at any time that he wants to, as this has to be one of his finest cinematic efforts.

Yes, this movie exhibits some American proclivities with its strong visual statement and fast pacing. It is intense, dramatic, and disturbing in many of its sequences, but it is also a fascinating portrait of those times and situations. As to some of its more unusual wartime scenes, I have no doubt that the story line represents a composite of actual events that took place during World War II.

It is also an eminently viewable movie, made all the more fascinating by the presence of the very captivating Dutch actress Carice van Houten as its star. She is a woman with such flawless skin that she could have modeled for a Vermeer painting. Van Houten carries this film in her dual role as Rachel Stein, a Dutch-Jewish girl, and Ellis, a Dutch-Christian girl who pretends to have Nazi sympathies. Ellis joins the resistance after she sees her entire family as well as many other Jews slaughtered right before her eyes. She would have been slaughtered as well had she not jumped off the boat and swam to safety.

Sebastian Koch, fresh off his triumph as the playwright in "The Lives of Others," now has the honor of starring in two Oscar-nominated foreign films in the same year. This film was nominated by the Dutch as their entry for an Oscar for the Best Foreign Language Film while "The Lives of Others" was nominated by the Germans. "The Lives of Others" went on to win the Oscar, but this movie is also a very important film. Both are compelling portraits of both personal corruption and moral redemption.

"Black Book" is a classic study of moral ambiguity not only for the characters in the film but also for us as we are watching the story line unfold. The many twists and turns in the plot cause us to view the small number of its major characters in a different light as more information about their personal integrity and their true loyalties is uncovered.

For seven decades we have been programmed to believe that the Nazis were always the bad guys and that the resistance fighters were always the good guys. However, in the horrible reality of war time, nothing is ever so black and white as this. With all of its other credits, this movie is all the more admirable for offering us in vivid detail a more realistic portrayal of the complexities of human nature.

Nazi Commandant Ludwig Müntze (Sebastian Koch) would normally be viewed with repugnance, yet here he is portrayed in a very sympathetic light. This is in spite of the fact that he is doubtless guilty of war crimes and might have been sentenced to death after the war. In this small portion of his life he softens and becomes human before our eyes. He lights up like a little kid when he looks at his beloved stamp collection. Müntze realizes that the war is lost and he sees no point in continuing with the senseless killings, so he countermands an order for the execution of three prisoners. He is also lonely after losing his entire family during an Allied bombing raid, so he is vulnerable to the considerable charms of Ellis even though he strongly suspects that she is Jewish. He recognizes another lost soul when he sees her.

In the world of the morally lost, he exhibits to us that he is not without redemption in his exhibit of a certain nobility of character that he must have possessed before the war. Needless to say, Sebastian Koch portrays Commandant Müntze to perfection much as he did in his role as the playwright in "The Lives of Others." Müntze becomes attractive enough that Ellis falls in love with him even though he is the head of the Nazi government and ostensibly her mortal enemy.

Conversely, members of the underground World War II resistance fighters are usually portrayed as heroes, yet here they are portrayed in a much more complex light with many shades of nuance. Some are war heroes, but others are flawed and even openly hostile and bigoted, especially towards the Jews who they are rescuing from certain death at the hands of the Nazis. Some of them even despise the Jews, but they put into practice the old maxim that states, "The enemy of my enemy is my friend." Thus, saving the Jews becomes an important element of their resistance to the hated Nazi occupiers.

More repugnant still are those who masquerade as resistance fighters, but who are actually traitorous worms who have sold their allegiance to the Nazis and now exist as cancerous spies inside the resistance cells to send the valiant fighters to their deaths when the moment is right and their cover can remain hidden.

These people are the worst of the worst, even more despicable than amoral Nazi officers like Günther Franken (Waldemar Kobus), a sterling specimen of the pond scum of humanity. At least he is upfront about where his loyalties lie, as despicable as they are. Other than his illegal financial scam on the side, he is devoted to the Third Reich and will carry out his mandate until the bitter end.

Franken has no noble scruples whatsoever and little interest in more than the basics of life like fine food and sex and being in a position to loot the treasure-ridden bodies of the Jews that he murders with the help of a resistance turncoat. His sole human quality is that he has some musical talent. Well, it has been said that even Hitler loved dogs.

It is August of 1944, just months before Germany' surrender and the end of the European theater of World War II. Rachel Stein (Carice van Houten) has been hidden in an attic by a Dutch farm family who are sympathetic to her plight. In spite of their good deed, however, they look down on Rachel for being Jewish and force her to learn passages from the New Testament which she must repeat before she receives her food. Their basic attitude is that if she had been a good Christian, then she wouldn't be having this problem.

Luck is not with this family when an Allied plane on a bombing run must gain altitude quickly to avoid being downed by German artillery. It is forced to jettison its payload of bombs, and one of them scores a direct hit on the farmhouse. Rachel is the only one to survive since she was outside at the time. Her hiding place destroyed, Rachel and a neighborhood friend look for a new hiding place and, in the process, stumble upon a sympathetic policeman who sends them to the members of the Dutch resistance. 145 minutes and rated R for strong violence, graphic nudity and language.