Actuakers One of my all time favorites.

TaryBiggBall It was OK. I don't see why everyone loves it so much. It wasn't very smart or deep or well-directed.

Portia Hilton Blistering performances.

Fatma Suarez The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

juneebuggy Gorgeous cinematography, an interesting story and a strong turnout from the fantastic Cate Blanchett make this worth a watch even if ultimately the whole thing gets a bit draggy.It has a very old school war-romance vibe going and is beautiful to look at; the costumes, the scenery, the acting is top notch. Blanchett pours emotion into her role and is very believable as a young Scottish woman who enlists as an espionage agent for the French resistance during World War II. As she's fluent in French Charlotte is recruited as an agent, but her reasons for taking the mission are actually to find the fate of her missing lover, an RAF pilot who has been shot down behind enemy lines.Assuming a new name 'Dominique' parachutes into German occupied France and is taken in by a local family, where she works to support the Resistance while also becoming entangled in the lives of an old man played brilliantly by (Michael Gambon), two young Jewish boys in hiding and Billy Crudup the irresistible leader of the resistance. Crudup puts in a good turn here too, its not a role I've seen from him before. The story is unique and intense but unfortunately the whole effort just comes off as kind of dull. 2/28/16

zardoz-13 Gillian Armstrong's World War II melodrama "Charlotte Gray" casts Oscar winning actress Cate Blanchett as a Scottish lady who volunteers to serve as an undercover agent for British Intelligence in Vichy dominated France. The French scenery and settings are colorful, but this adaptation of Sebastian Faulks' novel generates few thrills despite its strong cast, controversial subject matter (French collaboration with the Nazis), and authentic period recreation of manpower and materials, such as enemy tanks. The action unfolds in 1942 as Charlotte (Cate Blachett) has left Scotland traveling by train to take a job in London. During the train ride, she encounters an individual, Richard Cannerley (James Fleet of "Sense and Sensibility"), hands her a business card with an invitation to visit him. Charlotte attends the party and meets RAF Flight Lieutenant Peter Gregory (Rupert Penry-Jones of "Match Point"), but Connerly interrupts them and takes her aside. Eventually, Charlotte goes to work for SOE and she bails out over France and joins the resistance. Not long afterward, she learns that Peter has been shot down over Paris. No sooner has our heroine landed in France than she runs afoul of the authorities. She slips a package of radio valves to a lady and the Vichy police take her into custody. Later, Charlotte meets Julien Levade and she helps him blow up a munitions train. Again, "Charlotte Gray" is an above-average movie that sheds more light on the corrupt Vichy government. Eventually, after the war ends, our heroine runs into Gregory, but she no longer feels romantically inclined to him. The Vichy officials are corrupt bastards. The action is held to a minimum and the violence is negligible.

writers_reign Okay, you know going in that it's yet another film about a female agent liaising with the Resistance in Occupied France during World War Two, some viewers may even have read the (undeservedly) best-selling novel on which it was based, but you go anyway, maybe you admire Cate Blanchett and I've no quarrel with that, she's a fine actress, maybe you like 'period' movies, again you won't hear a squawk out of me, in fact those two reasons were what prompted me. It's a good movie - well, it's not a BAD movie, but perhaps in this case the opposite of bad is NOT good. An indifferent movie is nearer the truth. Within the last couple of years an English newspaper gave away a series of dvds set in WWII one of which was Carve Her Name With Pride which covers much of the same ground except that it was about a REAL Resistance worker, Violette Szabo, who failed to survive the war unlike the fictional Gray; Carve Her Name, made in black and white is light years better than the Technicolored Charlotte Gray, Blanchett's fine performance notwithstanding. As long as we're making comparisons I also disagree with the person who unaccountably rated this movie higher than Claude Berri's Lucie Aubrac but then difference of opinion is what makes horse races.

gelman@attglobal.net After her one night stand with a bomber pilot whom she immediately falls in love with, Charlotte Gray (Cate Blanchette), a young Scotswoman who speaks perfect French, agrees to be parachuted into Vichy France as liaison with the French underground because her boyfriend has been shot down, and she hopes somehow to find him. Most of the film takes place, however, in and around the small French town where Charlotte has landed. With her principal contact in the underground, Julien Levade (Billy Crudup) and his colleagues, Charlotte participates in blowing up a German train headed South with a load of tanks and other military equipment. The Nazis promptly occupy the town. Charlotte, meanwhile, has been sent to live with Julien's father (Michael Gambon) and to take care of two Jewish children whose parents were rounded up and dispatched to a work camp and presumably to their deaths. Eventually the children are found and Levade is determined to be a Jew (though he is not) and likewise sent away with the children. Julien claims that he too is Jewish but that assertion is waved away by the authorities on grounds that he could only be one-eighth Jewish and not therefore subject to the race laws. Soon we are back in England where Charlotte is reunited with her pilot boyfriend, who has turned up alive though believed dead, but Charlotte rejects him and returns to France after the way to find Julien with whom she has fallen in love. Perhaps it is explained in the book, but the film does not provide any real basis for understanding Charlotte's decision to abandon her pilot and return to her companion in the underground with whom the only kiss and cuddle she exchanged while the two were attempting to annoy and ultimately overpower the Nazi soldier who is guarding them. Blanchette, Crudup and Gambon are excellent actors, and Gillian Armstrong is quite an accomplished director. But variations on this plot have been screened on a dozen occasions, and this one leaves unexplained gaps, only one of which I've cited. It is worth seeing, provided you don't expect too much.