BLACK BOOK ***

Paul Verhoeven was never one to shrink from a bit of sex and violence in his films. Indeed, you could say a movie wasn't a Paul Verhoeven movie without them. This, of course, has often lead to the accusation that his films are primarily exploitation pictures and not to be taken seriously."Black Book", his marvellous and marvellously entertaining film about the Dutch Resistance during the Second World War, has its fair share of both sex and violence but it also has a terrifically gripping story, directed with considerable brio by Verhoeven and superbly photographed by Karl Walter Lindenlaub.

It is, of course, a thoroughly old-fashioned film, even with its quota of sex and violence, and is the kind of film that wouldn't have disgraced a major Hollywood studio forty or fifty years ago. Indeed Michael Palin might even have called it a Ripping Yarn and in the central role of the sexy resistance fighter who will do anything for Queen and country, Carice van Houten is outstanding.