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First, find a highly original story such as a book by Maurice Gee.

Second, get a named actor (Sam Neill would do and he's a pretty good sport). Some aspiring young amateurs will come cheaply -- and they'd probably like an excuse to get out of school. If the young ones are meant to be sympathetic characters, so much the better if they're good looking.

Third, leave out all the originality of the story, and replace it with your favourite Hollywood formula, particularly ones with truculent teenagers. Keep most of the character names or you might be accused of originality of your own. Keeping the location might be useful, but not necessarily. Maybe not a good idea to change the location to New York because too many people know what it looks like, and it would cost too much to film there.

Fourth, get some nifty special effects. Fire always makes a good spectacle.

Fifth, get some cheap hair-dye to make some of the main characters' hair red, but don't mention what red hair has to do with the story -- maintain a bit of mystery.

And there you have it.

Easy.

Comments on this list seem to indicate that everyone except some Americans seem to get what this movie was about. The subtle combination of very black humour and acute intelligence evidently is not for everyone.

That's a shame, because if it could be appreciated by the present White House, we'd not be hearing pathetically inane bleatings about fixing the world by taking out the "bad guys". Hint: This isn't just entertainment.

Until such subtlety is understood we'll only succeed in making problems worse instead of addressing their causes. If this movie goes some way to bringing about that understanding, it will be a great addition to the achievements of the human race. Even if it doesn't, I'm glad I saw it.

As others have expressed, there are some flaws in the plot -- notably how a plane could land to rescue Charlotte when it was impossible for one to make drops in the same area, but life doesn't follow very logical patterns, so I can live with that.

I was impressed with the subtle difference between what the Vichy "collaborator" heard in French (we hear in English) and what he says in German. For those who didn't follow it, "... fought for France in the Great War ..." becomes "... fought against Germany ...". I would have preferred to hear the dialogue in the language it was spoken in and read subtitles. After all, the mass market which would be put off by subtitles isn't going to be interested in a war movie in which the main character is largely unsuccessful, so forget the dumbing down.

For me, it was a much more interesting than the normal popcorn-type of war movie. Real bravery and sacrifice doesn't require weaponry and a dirty face but is shown in a more subtle way in "Charlotte Grey" -- notably the agent who in effect takes the bullet when Charlotte's first mission fails. The stories of comrades in arms has been told thousands of times before -- nearly always from a masculine perspective, but seldom is the story of regular people been portrayed as well as in this little Gillian Armstrong gem.

Others have commented on the great photography and the acting and I have few quibbles with what has been said. Cate Blanchette's accent sounded more Scottish at times than at others but in every other way she was as good as I have come to expect from when I first saw her in "Oscar and Lucinda" (another Gillian Armstrong gem). She has such an interesting face that can vary from the almost plain to the strikingly beautiful.

Don't wait for the video or DVD! Go and see some great big screen cinematography before it's too late.