Paul Verhoeven’s career in Hollywood could, with the risk of understatement, be described as eccentric. On the one hand he’s crafted a string of science-fiction flicks that (excepting the risible Hollow Man) could safely be called classics – namely Robocop, Total Recall and Starship Troopers. On the other, he’s helmed soft-porn thrillers like Basic Instinct and Showgirls (which made Verhoeven the first ever director to collect a RAZZIE in person). The only thing that all his American films have in common is excess and, for better or worse, his work has played a huge part in the relaxation of censorship over the last twenty years – in real terms, that makes him one of the most influential directors of his generation.

So, it’s perhaps a strange turn that takes him back to his native Holland, to make a movie about the last weeks of that country’s Nazi occupation. Granted it’s ground that he’s visited before, in 1977′s Soldier of Orange – and in fact, Black Book is a product of ideas that were left over from that film. But still, it’s hard to know what to expect from Verhoeven’s drastic career u-turn – an historical war movie from the director of Starship Troopers and Basic Instinct is an unnerving prospect.

And sure enough, Verhoeven hasn’t so much left his American phase behind as siphoned it off and taken it home with him. The result is like no war movie ever made – a strange conjunction of old-school Hollywood Technicolor pictures and Verhoeven’s preoccupations with the unqualified depiction of sex and violence. On the one hand, the cinematography is bright and colourful, and Karl Lindenlaub’s score is as bombastic as anything John Williams has composed; on the other, there’s far more graphic blood and nudity than the usual treatments of such a subject would allow.

Fortunately, Verhoeven’s material here is suited to his unique style. The story follows Jewish Rachel Stein, who begins the film in hiding from Holland’s Nazi occupiers, but soon finds herself living under the assumed name of Ellis de Vries and allied with the local resistance. Wanting to contribute to the resistance effort and also seeking revenge for her own personal tragedies, Rachel sees an opportunity in seducing the local Gestapo commandant, Müntze. It’s worth noting that all this plot ground is covered in about forty-five minutes, and there’s a whole lot more to follow – Black Book maintains a startling pace, sacrificing characterization but thankfully not coherency, and providing both tension and thrills at a satisfyingly steady rate.

But, like much of its director’s output, it’s nowhere near as simple as it might appear on the surface. Bubbling underneath are difficult questions about good and evil and those places where it becomes impossible to tell one from the other. If in some ways Verhoeven oversimplifies or paints with broad strokes, in others his characteristic pursuit of honesty uncovers uncomfortable truths about the Second World War and its aftermath that are frequently overlooked. It helps that his lead actress turns in such a remarkable performance – Carice van Houten is so convincing and sympathetic as Rachel / Ellis that it’s hard to condemn her, and easier to reconsider your preconceptions of what can be justified in appalling circumstances.

Still, Black Book is not the deepest or most complex study of history ever put to film. What it is, is entertaining – once the initial sense of guilty pleasure at enjoying a movie about such tragic events subsides, it’s hard not to get caught up by Verhoeven’s giddy, old-school sense of adventure. With its beautiful, buxom heroine, cardboard Nazi villain and steady flow of bloody action set-pieces, it has more in common with those old Commando war comics that it does with something like The Pianist – but that should in no way be taken as a criticism.