Nice-looking but predictable and unpersuasive attempt to recreate the kind of "rousing entertainment" that was a Hollywood staple back in the 1940s.
Linda Voss (Melanie Griffith) is a half-Jewish, half-Irish working girl from Queens, New York. The year is 1940 and Hitler is sweeping across Europe. Plucky Linda is driven by two fantasies: to rescue her Jewish relatives in Berlin and to convince her boss, lawyer Ed Leland (Michael Douglas), that
she is both his intellectual and romantic equal. After Ed is revealed as as a high-ranking colonel in the Office of Strategic Services, she gets her chance. Fluent in German and thoroughly versed in German customs and manners, Linda sees herself as the ideal candidate to replace one of Ed's key
operatives in Germany when that spy is killed. Ed tries to dissuade her, but Linda persists and finally wins him over. Her assignment is to infiltrate the home of a high-ranking Nazi official.
SHINING THROUGH is loaded with romance, sentimentality and overstated emotion. While these may have been the very ingredients that made similar movies of the 1930s and 40s so much fun to watch, this movie is a sometimes ludicrous anachronism in the context of the 1990s. Production-wise, though,
SHINING THROUGH is highly polished, with exquisite camerawork from cinematographer Jan de Bont and superior contributions from production designer Anthony Pratt and costume designer Marit Allen. leave a comment
