Afouotos
Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.
Aneesa Wardle
The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.
Asad Almond
A clunky actioner with a handful of cool moments.
richard-1787
This movie is such a disappointment.There is a lot of talent here, especially in the acting dept but also in the cinematography. There are beautifully shot scenes. Hedy Lamarr is made to look beautiful almost past belief, not to mention very mysterious.But the script here is terrible. Really terrible. All the acting in the world could not save it. Yes, better directing could. Negulescu was certainly not Michael Curtiz.But it is the sometimes incoherent and always flat-footed script that does this movie in.Watch Casablanca again, even if it is for the 20th time. That's an astounding masterpiece. This is dead.
sol1218
***SPOILERS*** Somewhat boring and overdone Casablanca-like war drama with the stunningly beautiful, considered to be the most beautiful woman in all the world at the time, Hedy Lamarr as anti-Nazi freedom fighter and former Dachau concentration camp survivor Irene Von Mohr. Don't let Irene's last name fool you she's actually French who's married to German Diplomat Hugo Von Mohr, Victor Franken, who got her out of Dachau at the risk of his own neck.Getting involved, almost by accident, with fellow anti-Nazi freedom fighter Vincent Van Der Lyn, Paul Henreid, who's known in anti-Nazi freedom fighting circles as the a**-kicking "Flying Dutchman" Irene, in at first not knowing who he is, thinks that he's some kind of Nazi spy working for chief Nazi honcho in natural Lisbon Portugal Dr. Schmitt, Steven Geray. Vincent is on the run from his home in Nazi occupied Holland after almost single-handedly, as we see in the start of the film, wiping out the entire German Army garrison stationed there! Slipping into Portugal Vincent wants to go legit in fighting the Nazis as a member of the free Dutch Air Force instead of being a guerrilla fighter, who's not protected by the Geneva Convention, by getting to England where the Free Dutch Air Force originates from.The film "The Conspirator's" moves at a snails pace with Vincent getting in and out trouble, and jail, until the last ten minutes or so when the action really starts to pick up. It's then at a swanky Lisbon Casino that it's revealed who's the fink, or traitor, who set poor Vincent up in the murder of fellow anti-Nazi freedom fighter Jennings, Monte Blue, that he was arrested and put behind bars for. Even though the identity of the traitor was not that hard to figure out it was about the most exciting scene in the somewhat very uninteresting, with the exception of Miss. Lamarr, film.P.S Besides Paul Henreid there's also Casablanca cast members Sidney Greenstreet and Peter Lorre as anti-Nazi freedom fighters Ricardo Quintanilla and Jan Bernazsky to round out the the films Casablanca-like cast. There's also Eduardo Ciannelli as Portuguese Army Colonel Almeida who's out to get Vincent, for violating Portuguese immigration laws, before he slips out of the country on his way to the UK. It was Ciannelli who was to play some 15 years later the lovable Greenwich Village jazz bar and nightclub owner Waldo in the TV series "Johnny Staccato".
MartinHafer
This is a thoroughly adequate film and not much more. It was intended to try to capitalize on the success of CASABLANCA. Despite Warner Brothers trying to recapture the magic of this earlier film, THE CONSPIRATORS just can't compare--mostly due to a very poor script and some poor performances. Now the parallels to CASABLANCA are there but the film isn't a remake. Instead, it's a slight reworking of the ideas and a few plot points. Many of the stars in the film were actually originally in CASABLANCA (Paul Henreid, Sidney Greenstreet and Peter Lorr).Henreid plays a Dutch freedom fighter who has escaped to neutral Portugal. His hope is to go from there to Britain, since he is a wanted man in Nazi occupied Europe. However, once in Lisbon, there is a long and complicated web of Nazis and anti-fascist operatives. Uncovering who were actually friends and who were double-agents was the main theme of the film.As for Henreid and Hedy Lamarr, they are agreeable enough people but just don't have the charisma to make us forget Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman from CASABLANCA. Henreid isn't really bad--he just isn't Bogie. As for Lamarr, she is the weakest link in the film. Like so many of her films, she is essentially a walking mannequin--wearing lots and lots of expensive costumes (common for her films) but also delivering a rather flat and emotionless performance. Had the part been written more multi-dimensionally, perhaps she would have been a greater asset to the film. Aside from her beauty, she added little to the film--especially since her romance with Henried seemed to come out of nowhere and there was little chemistry between them.As for the intrigue, it wasn't bad but it also wasn't particularly good. Plus, so many plot holes and inconsistencies made the film very slow going at the end. The finale seemed to drag and much of it just didn't make sense.Still, this is a decent wartime film--not great, but a decent enough time passer.
blanche-2
You know that Warner Brothers - once they have their hands on a hot property, they slice it, dice it, and put it in the Mixmaster. Just look at the three versions of "The Maltese Falcon." Now it's wartime, and that hot property is, of course "Casablanca." In "The Conspirators," part of that magnificent cast is reunited - Paul Henried, Sydney Greenstreet and Peter Lorre - in this story of a Dutch freedom fighter, Vincent Van der Lyn, in neutral Lisbon and having trouble figuring out who wants to help him and who wants to hurt him. The suspects are Greenstreet, the head of a resistance group, Lorre, one of its members, and the exquisite Hedy Lamarr, married to a Nazi official.The story is harder to follow and ultimately, the film is not as good as "Joan of Paris," another World War II film starring Henried, but it still has great atmosphere and is fairly intriguing. There just isn't enough of Greenstreet or Lorre, one of the great screen teams. Paul Henried, a very useful actor during World War II while the stars were away, does a good job as Van der Lyn. Lamarr is positively outrageously beautiful - no, she's not much of an actress - it's a face made for the closeup, and one can just look at her forever. What she brings is a certain enigmatic quality, probably by default, but who cares.If this pops up on TCM, you won't be sorry you saw it, but you won't be swept away either.
