A fascinating central theme eventually gets lost here in a story that proves silly once too often. Nick Nolte is an American playwright living in 1939 in Germany who is offered an intriguing deal by a mysterious US agent (John Goodman): to be an apparent traitor, making weekly pro-Nazi, anti-Jewish broadcasts while really working for the Allies through a secret radio code unknown even to him. Feeling he and his wife are on an island of their own making, he accepts. After she is killed, he's captured by US soldiers but returned to America in anonymity on Goodman's intervention. Why Nolte would hang on to his own name there, making him possible to trace, is only one of several foolish script contrivances that involve caricatured white supremists and an unconvincing last-minute change of heart by Nolte when it seems he's achieved his goal. A long slog, this, for meagre rewards.

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