Black Book

2006 • 2h 25m •

Drama Thriller War

MOVIEVIBE Rating

★ 7.4/10

1,278 reviews

Your Rating

Israel, 1956: Jewish teacher Rachel Stein rather unexpectedly meets an old friend at the kibbutz. It brings back memories of her experiences in the Netherlands during the war, memories of betrayal. In September 1944, Rachel's hiding place is bombed by Allied troops; she makes contact with a resistance member and joins a group of Jews to be smuggled across the Biesbosch to the freed South Netherlands. Only Rachel escapes a massacre by patrol Germans, and is rescued by a resistance group under the leadership of Gerben Kuipers, whose son is captured trying to smuggle weapons. Kuipers asks Rachel to seduce SS-hauptsturmführer Ludwig Müntze, a mission that she will soon learn that the boat attack wasn't a coincidence.

"To fight the enemy, she must become one of them."

Top Billed Cast

Carice van Houten

Rachel Stein / Ellis de Vries

Sebastian Koch

Ludwig Müntze

Thom Hoffman

Hans Akkermans

Halina Reijn

Ronnie

Waldemar Kobus

Günther Franken

Matthias Schoenaerts

Joop

Derek de Lint

Gerben Kuipers

Christian Berkel

General Käutner

Detailed Critic & Audience Reviews

W Wuchak Verified TMDB Critic

2020-08-09

_**Carice van Houten plays a spy working for the Dutch Resistance during WW2**_

During the German occupation of Netherlands in WW2, a Jewess singer turned spy (Carice van Houten) gains access to the Gestapo headquarters to help the Dutch Resistance. Sebastian Koch plays a sympathetic German officer while Waldemar Kobus is on hand as the heavy. Thom Hoffman plays an agent for the Resistance.

“Black Book” (2006), aka “Zwartboek,” is a Euro WW2 film by Paul Verhoeven that balances drama, action, intrigue, romance and suspense. It’s reminiscent of contemporaneous flicks like “In...

F FrameFatale Verified TMDB Critic

2026-07-31

Paul Verhoeven’s Black Book is one of the finest World War II thrillers I’ve seen. It is tense, beautifully photographed, and constantly keeps the audience off balance with shifting loyalties, betrayals, and moral ambiguity. Rather than dividing people neatly into heroes and villains, it presents a world where survival often demands impossible choices and where goodness and cruelty can exist side by side.

At the heart of the film is Rachel Stein, a remarkable protagonist whose intelligence, resilience, and humanity anchor every twist in the story. She is never reduced to a symbol or an ...