I’ve never really looked at what Steven Soderbergh‘s The Good German (Warner Bros., early-mid fall ’06) actually is (or seems to be), and then along comes Garth Franklin and Dark Horizons with a short profile. It’s been directed by Soderbergh from a script by Paul Attanasio (and based on Joseph Kanon’s novel), with a cast including George Clooney, Cate Blanchett, Tobey Maguire, Beau Bridges and Jack Thompson. It’s a risky romance drama set in the bombed-out ruins of post-WWII Berlin, and it’s going to be a modest thing…perhaps an engrossing and well-made modest thing, but modest all the same with everyone wearing 1947 haircuts. U.S. Army war correspondent Jake Geismar (Clooney) is putting the blocks to former girlfriend Lena Brandt (Blanchett) while she tries to hook up with her missing husband Emil (Christian Oliver) so they can get out of Berlin and…I don’t know what. (Move to New Jersey? Buy a ranch in Northern California?) But Emil is the object of a manhunt by both the American and Russian armies, and “intrigue mounts as Jake tries to uncover the secrets Lena may be hiding in her desperation to get herself and her husband out of Berlin,” etc., etc. Tully (Tobey Maguire), a soldier in the American army motor pool assigned to drive Jake around Berlin, has black market connections that may be Lena’s way out — or lead them all into even darker territory. See what I mean?