'The Good Traitor' Review: Wartime Intrigue Spices Up Otherwise Dull Marital Drama
The complicated life of the Danish diplomat who finessed Greenland's U.S. military bases.
Alissa Simon, provided by
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Director: Christina Rosendahl
With: Ulrich Thomsen, Denise Gough, Mikkel Boe Følsgaard, Zoë Tapper, Henry Goodman, Ross McCall, Esben Dalgaard, Burn Gorman. (English, Danish dialogue)
Running time: 1 hour 55 minutes
Courtesy of Samuel Goldwyn Films
Fascinating backroom politics circa WWII are undermined by banal marital melodrama in Danish director Christina Rosendahl’s “The Good Traitor,” resulting in a so-so period drama that raises more questions than it answers. The film centers on the life of diplomat-gone-rogue Henrik Kauffmann (Ulrich Thomsen, stoic), who was posted to Washington, D.C., as Danish Ambassador in 1939. When the Nazis occupy Denmark on April 9, 1940, Kauffmann declares himself the only true representative of the free Danish people and goes on to make a number of high-risk autonomous decisions that, in the long run, help to free his homeland. Unfortunately, the details of Kauffmann’s wheeling and dealing are continually undercut by the film’s concentration on his rather unusual personal life, rendered here in trite narrative clichés.