It stars Brad Pitt as a Canadian intelligence officer and Marion Cotillard as a French Resistance fighter who fall in love while posing as a married couple during a mission in Casablanca in 1942.
In 1942 during World War II, Wing Commander Max Vatan, a Royal Canadian Air Force pilot with intelligence duties, travels to Casablanca in Morocco to assassinate a German ambassador.
To test their suspicions, the SOE runs a "blue dye" operation: Max is ordered to write down a piece of false intelligence at home, where Marianne can find it.
If the information is picked up from intercepted German transmissions, Max must personally execute her, and if he is found to be an accomplice he will be hanged for high treason.
Max finds a young pilot, Adam Hunter, gives him a photograph with a "classified" note—asking if the woman in the photo is Marianne Beauséjour—and instructs him to obtain a "yes" or "no" answer from Delamare.
His commanding officer, Frank Heslop, comes and tells him that Hunter was killed while waiting on the ground for the answer from Delamare and berates him for his insubordination.
The next evening, Max takes the place of a Lysander pilot and flies to France to meet Delamare, who is being held at the local police station.
Prior to leaving, Delamare tells Max that Marianne was a talented pianist who had once played La Marseillaise in a café in defiance of the occupying Germans in the early stages of the war.
In February 2015, it was announced that Robert Zemeckis was set to direct the film, then only known as an untitled World War II romantic thriller, in which Brad Pitt would star.
Her aunt told him the story of how her brother had fallen for a French woman who would become pregnant with his child and how he brought her to the United States where she gave birth.
[7][8] In June 2015, Marion Cotillard was cast to play a spy along with Pitt, who fall in love during a mission to kill a German official.
[12] Principal photography on the film began in February 2016 in London, with the family home located on the corners of Christchurch Hill and Willow Road in Hampstead.
[2] The Hollywood Reporter estimated the film lost the studio $75–90 million, when factoring together all expenses and revenues, and was listed amongst the year's box office flops.
The site's consensus states: "Allied has its moments, but doesn't quite achieve epic wartime romance status—a disappointment made more profound by the dazzling talent assembled on either side of the camera.
[37] Stephanie Zacharek of Time stated that "Even within this highly synthetic world, Pitt and Cotillard give sturdy, coded performances that feel naturalistic, not phony: They understand clearly that their chief mission is to tap the tradition of melodrama, and they take it seriously.
"[42] Rex Reed from The New York Observer gave the film four out of four, writing: "Beautiful, bold and blazing with sex and suspense, Allied is a gorgeously photographed, intensely romantic, action-packed film by the great director Robert Zemeckis with two titanic star performances by Brad Pitt and Marion Cotillard that delivers something for everyone.
[44] For RogerEbert.com, Peter Sobcynzki gave the film 4 stars, highlighting the music from Alan Silvestri, the cinematography from Don Burgess and the costume design from Joanna Johnston.
In his summary he wrote, "It is a lovely homage to the kind of entertainment that Hollywood used to put out in the day without breaking a sweat, while still strong and sure enough to work on viewers who have never seen any of the films to which it pays tribute.
[46] Peter Bradshaw, in his 2 star review for The Guardian, cited the film as "arduous" and the script as "an unconvincing and sluggish pastiche of a war movie".
He would also write critically of Pitt and Cotillard's chemistry, comparing them to "thesp robots from Westworld with some kind of Google Translate chip implanted in their heads".
Lyttleton would also be critical of the visual effects and the third act of the film, drawing a comparison of "malevolently" splicing scenes of Michael Bay's Pearl Harbor into Alfred Hitchcock's Notorious.