Allied (2016)

Allied is a 2016 war film directed by Robert Zemeckis and written by Steven Knight. It stars Brad Pitt as a Canadian intelligence officer and Marion Cotillard as a French Resistance fighter and collaborator who fall in love while posing as a married couple during a mission in Casablanca. Jared Harris, Simon McBurney and Lizzy Caplan also star.

Principal photography began in February 2016 in London. The film premiered in London on November 21, 2016^[4] and was released in the United States on November 23, 2016 by Paramount Pictures. It received mixed reviews from critics, although Pitt and particularly Cotillard's performances were praised, and grossed $120 million worldwide. It also received an Academy Award nomination for Best Costume Design.

In 1942 during World War II, Wing Commander Max Vatan, a Royal Canadian Air Force pilot serving on intelligence duties, travels to Casablanca in Morocco to assassinate a German ambassador. He is partnered with a French Resistance fighter named Marianne Beauséjour, who had escaped from France after her resistance group was compromised and killed.

The two pose as a married couple and grow close, despite agreeing that in their line of work feelings can get people killed. Marianne, who is trusted by the Germans, secures Max an invitation to the party where they plan to conduct the assassination. On the day itself, they have sex inside a car in the middle of a desert sandstorm, knowing that they might not survive. However, the mission is successful and they both escape. Max asks Marianne to come with him to London and be his wife. The two get married, settle down in Hampstead, and have a baby girl named Anna, who is born during a bombing raid.

A year later, Max learns from the Special Operations Executive that Marianne is suspected of being a German spy, having adopted her identity after the real Marianne was killed in France, and that the German ambassador they assassinated was a dissident Hitler wanted dead. In order to test their suspicions, SOE run 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, or be hanged for high treason. Max is told otherwise to act normally and not do his own investigation.

Defying orders, Max visits a former colleague named Guy Sangster who knew Marianne; however, Sangster, blinded by a wartime injury, cannot confirm her identity. He reveals that resistance fighter Paul Delamare, who worked with Marianne in France, is still alive in Dieppe and would be able to identify her. Max finds a young pilot named 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.

Max and Marianne host a house party. Max's 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. Max wonders if what he was told about Marianne is all a test of his loyalty as part of a promotion to V-Section.

The following evening, Max takes the place of a Lysander pilot and flies to France to meet with Delamare, who is being held at the local police station. Max and the local resistance break into the town's local jail, but Delamare is drunk and cannot verify the picture. The delay allows time for the French police officer to alert the Germans, whom Max and the resistance manage to defeat. Prior to leaving, Max is informed by Delamare that Marianne was a talented pianist who had once played La Marseillaise in defiance of occupying Germans in the early stages of the war.

Back in England, Max takes Marianne to a local pub and demands she play the piano. Marianne cannot. She admits she is a spy and forwarded the "blue dye" message, which Max left in plain view. She claims her feelings for Max are genuine, and that she was forced back into being a German spy because German agents were threatening Anna.

Max, unwilling to kill his wife, tells her they need to flee the country. He kills Marianne's handlers, a nanny and a jeweller. They drive to a local airbase, but Max cannot get the plane to start before Heslop and the military police arrive. Max tries to plead his case before the officers, but Marianne tells him that she loves him, asks him to take care of Anna, and then shoots herself. Heslop orders the soldiers present to report that Max executed Marianne as per his orders, so that Max himself will not be punished.

After the war, Max moves to a ranch in Medicine Hat, Alberta, Canada, as he had always wanted to do, and raises Anna. The film ends with Marianne reading a letter that she had written to her daughter, anticipating that one day her real identity would be uncovered.