BEFORE: Continuing my long-term (OK, 4 days...) stand against the Red Menace. And following up those Pierce Brosnan films with another ex-James Bond, Sean Connery - last seen playing an author in "Finding Forrester", but playing a book editor/publisher here. This is based on a novel by John LeCarré, who also wrote "The Tailor of Panama". Uh-oh...
THE PLOT: An expatriate British publisher unexpectedly finds himself working for British intelligence to investigate people in Russia.
AFTER: Yep, I've got essentially the same problem here as I had with "Tailor of Panama". Namely that the film's director forgot to make anything exciting happen. You know what's exciting about spy films? A good car chase, maybe a shoot-out or even a few explosions. Give me the action of a Bond film without the ridiculousness, and I'll be happy.
Unfortunately, this is another talky-talky film. There's plenty of intrigue, but hardly any action - and no, a train ride from Moscow to Leningrad doesn't count, since no one dies on the train, or rides on top of it, or anything like that.
I have a bad feeling, though, that most real-life spy work might be as boring as this film - trading state secrets in unmarked briefcases, getting people to admit things on tape, even writing in invisible ink. But this is a movie, and darn it, you've got to give the audience something exciting to look at, besides Michelle Pfeiffer (last seen in "Wolf").
And the notion is put forth that in order to love one's country, one must betray it. Really? Where's the logic that says that? I'm missing a step in there...I can understand everyone who traffics in information between countries as trying to get the best deal for themselves, but I don't see why betrayal of one's country is so highly regarded here.
I'm honestly glad that Connery wasn't playing a Russian here (like he did in "The Hunt For Red October", or we would have had another accent problem. But he mis-pronounces the name "Dante" throughout the whole film - he says something closer to "Danty", and you'd think a book publisher would know how to say the name of a famous author. He also mis-pronounces the word "urinal", with a long-i sound - weird.
Also starring Roy Scheider (last seen in "Marathon Man"), John Mahoney (last seen in "The Hudsucker Proxy"), Klaus Maria Brandauer, and the ever-present J.T. Walsh (last seen in "Misery").
RATING: 3 out of 10 cricket bats
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