For all those who continually carp that "they don't make 'em like that any more" here's a rattling caper that could have rolled into the Odeon thirty years ago.

There's nasty (and nice) Nazis, a heroine happy to drop her camisole before you can say "Heil Hitler" and more boys' own action than you can shake the muzzle of a Schmeisser machine pistol at.

It's a classic, old-fashioned wartime guilty pleasure and wouldn't look out of place in a double bill alongside Von Ryan's Express, Kelly's Heroes or even The Great Escape.

Carice Van Houten plays Rachel, a Jewish cabaret chanteuse who has fled Germany only for her farmyard hiding place in the Dutch countryside to be accidentally obliterated by an American bomber.

Spirited away by the resistance, she rejoins her family as they are taken aboard a barge and smuggled through the dykes to safety in a Belgium recaptured by the Allies.

However, tragedy strikes when they are intercepted by a German patrol boat and the whole group - with the exception of Rachel - are mercilessly gunned down by SS stormtroopers.

On the run again, Rachel again hooks up with the underground and volunteers to bed the local head of the Gestapo as part of a honeytrap to gain crucial intelligence.

However, there is the small matter of the fatal betrayal of her family to resolve and she soon realises there's no such thing as black and white in war.

After hits ranging from Robocop to Basic Instinct, director Paul Verhoeven returns to his Dutch homeland after 23 years in Hollywood to craft this entertaining World War II thriller.

All the Verhoeven trademarks are here - reels of gratuitous nudity, wince-inducing violence and a plot that bowls along like a Tiger tank with the brakes off.

Prickly issues such a Dutch anti-semitism are referenced even if the airing of the Good German concept - in this case a reluctant fascist philatelist - doesn't quite work.

Just how "good" could a card-carrying Nazi be - even if he does collect stamps - if he was to rise over the years to the post of a Gestapo chief by 1944?

Despite the questions over the fascist philatelist, there's still stacks to enjoy as Rachel goes blonde, disrobes at the drop of a champagne cork and falls for a caring Kraut.

Made for a modest £17m, this uses its locations well and the action in handled as well as might expected by Verhoeven even if the plot machinations resemble Cluedo on crystal meth by the end.

Get ready to boo the baddies, holler for the heroine and even ponder some politics.

Tim Evans