Black Book (2006)

Dutch cinema giant Paul Verhoeven has trafficked in outrage from his earliest arthouse efforts (Spetters, The 4th Man) to his wild blockbusters (RoboCop, Total Recall) to his over-the-top sexual freak-bonanzas (Basic Instinct, Showgirls). For Black Book, Verhoeven took a break from Hollywood to tell a World War II saga set in the Nazi-occupied Netherlands of his youth. In 1944 Jewish beauty Rachel (Carice van Houten) is on the run when, after a series of harrowing adventures, she finds solace with a group of Dutch resistance fighters. Rachel's commitment to the cause is tested when she is asked to seduce Third Reich officer Ludwig Müntze (Sebastian Koch) in order to gain knowledge that will help defeat Hitler. Black Book (2006) is rousing, erotic, scary, funny, and heartbreaking all at once—a feat that only Paul Verhoeven can pull off. And he does it here every bit as brilliantly as Carice pulls off her clothes.