The Operative

Year 13, Day 182 - 7/1/21 - Movie #3,885

BEFORE: Before I kick off July's movies, here's a look at the formats for the movies of June:

13 Movies watched on cable (saved to DVD): After Class, The Limits of Control, City of Ember, The Last Word, The Jesus Rolls, The Burnt Orange Heresy, The Calling, Arbitrage, Employee of the Month, Brigsby Bear, Bill & Ted Face the Music, The Way Back (2020), Ode to Joy

5 Movies watched on cable (not saved): Clear History, The Pursuit of D.B. Cooper, Atlantic City, Trapped in Paradise, Let's Go to Prison

4 watched on Netflix: The Kindergarten Teacher, Thunder Force, Middle Men, Like Father

1 watched on Amazon Prime: Brittany Runs a Marathon

1 watched on Apple TV+: On the Rocks
1 watched on Tubi: The Bill Murray Stories

2 watched on HBO MAX: The Eagle Has Landed, An American Pickle
1 watched on a random site: Howl
28 TOTAL

Cable's still coming on strong, but July is going to be very different - I anticipate fewer movies out of the next 31 coming from cable.  I still have to clear some films off the DVR and make progress on that front, but I'm also getting ready to start my big Summer Music Concert and/or Documentary series, and many those films will be streaming from Netflix, Amazon Prime and HBO Max (I know HBO is technically cable, but I'm counting films watched via their streaming service separately...)

Now, WHEN the Summer Concert series begins is a bit at issue, because after July 4 I think I'm going to slow things down a bit, maybe watch 4 or 5 movies each week instead of a solid 7 - it's just becoming too difficult to juggle two jobs and the movie habit, plus all the other things in my life.  So while I've got the next 31 movies planned already, if that chain creeps into August, it should still be OK, and it will take the pressure off of me.  I still have to link up the end of the Summer Concert series to the start of the Shocktober horror chain, but I'll discuss these plans more tomorrow.

For now, Martin Freeman carries over from "Ode to Joy". 

THE PLOT: A German woman is recruited by the Mossad to work undercover in Tehran. 

AFTER:  What troubles me greatly tonight is the fact that this film WAS available on HBO Max - perhaps right up until the time I, you know, wanted to watch it.  Now, of course it's gone - and I had to rent it from iTunes, which was one dollar cheaper than renting it from iTunes.  But WHY, WHY did it scroll off HBO Max?  I thought that service was going to be different - and I've got five more films in the July chain that are on HBO Max, are they going to disappear, too, before I get a chance to watch them?  HBO Max, you're just as bad as Netflix, it seems - films on my watchlist could disappear with no warning, and then I have to shill out three or four bucks just to maintain the chain.  At least I KNOW with Netflix that the usual availability period is two years for most films, a bit longer for ones that Netflix funded themselves.  What's YOUR availability period, HBO Max, because your service has only been around since May 2020, so how could a film like "The Operative" disappear so (relatively) quickly?  

Maybe it's because this film's plot is such a mess - and maybe that's why HBO Max dropped it so fast?  I found it very difficult to follow, and I don't think the plotline that's posted on Wikipedia got it right, it's full of mistakes.  Umm, I think.  "Working undercover" shouldn't be an excuse to have a character whose motivations and mission are unclear - the Israeli Mossad agency inserts Rachel as an ESL teacher to get close to Farhad through his son (nephew?), but WHY, exactly?  He's the heir to an electronics company that makes computer servers and racks that hold computer servers, but his job seems to be tangential to something else that is very unclear.  It might have something to do with Iran's potential nuclear capability, but I'm just not sure, and I swear I was paying attention.  There's that standard spy scene where an agent is copying information from the company's computer to a flash drive, but what, exactly, was she copying?  That's also unclear.  

To make matters worse, Farhad then asks Rachel to smuggle something in to the country, which he claims has something to do with medical tech, but does it really?  I have no idea.  Her agency also asks her to smuggle in some equipment, which has to do with explosives.  So, umm, which is it?  Is she smuggling in the medical stuff, or the bombs, or both?  And why does she only have a problem with the bomb part, is it just because of the danger involved, or is it because she loves Farhad and will do whatever he asks, and that makes it less of a job and more of a favor?  Again, unclear.  Unclear, unclear, unclear.  What is the mission and how do her personal feelings for Farhad affect it?  And what was it about Farhad that took precedence over the terms of that mission?  

Then we come to the plot posted on Wikipedia, which states that "Rachel's personal involvement with Farhad allows Thomas to involve him in the smuggling of parts for Iran's nuclear program, which ill work to undermine that program and make Farhad a target for recruitment as a Mossad resource."  Nearly every word of that sentence is incorrect, I think.  Thomas's smuggling was separate from the smuggling that Farhad wanted Rachel to do, nobody said anything about her smuggling nuclear parts, it was always either "medical tech" or "bombs" or maybe both, and then why would Mossad want to recruit Farhad?  That was never part of the deal, it seemed more like they wanted to arrest and prosecute him than recruit him.  Now I just don't even know which way is up, after reading this.  Was I watching a different movie than the one recapped on Wiki?  

To make matters even worse, Rachel becomes pregnant, and at one point visits an abortion clinic in Tehran.  But she's spotted there by someone she met at a party, so she leaves - but does this mean she wanted the baby, or didn't want the baby?  And why did seeing somebody from that party make her leave, it's a big narrative cop-out, right?  Then later she gets in a car accident, and Rachel's obviously concerned about the fetus, but we never really find out if the baby was OK, or if there was anything bad that resulted from the accident.  Then Thomas asks her about going to the abortion clinic, but he doesn't seem to make the logical conclusion from this that Rachel was pregnant.  Huh?  Is he THAT stupid, that he doesn't realize that only pregnant women do that?  Again, I'm scratching my head.  

Then there's the ultimate cop-out at the end, where the agency that employed Rachel suddenly wants to dispose of her, again, there's no WHY presented, it's just something that happens.  And the movie ends before we get to find out if they succeeded, which is just maddening.  You can't just pull a choose-your-own-ending at the last minute, you've GOT to give me something concrete before you go away.  

The big problem here, the cause of all the other little problems, is the time-jumping.  At the start, handler Thomas gets a mysterious phone call from undercover agent Rachel, and this should set his plans in motion for immediate extraction, only it doesn't, it sets off a series of discussions between him and other Mossad agents, which essentially tell her whole story via flashbacks.  But there were no dates given via subtitles, so it was very difficult to tell when we entered flashback mode, or if the scenes with Rachel were also happening NOW.  As a result Rachel's timeline was very difficult to piece together, plus why wasn't he rushing to help her out, why did he take the time to re-tell her entire storyline to another agent?  Isn't she in, you know, some form of danger, isn't that why she CALLED you?  

Also starring Diane Kruger (last seen in "Fathers & Daughters"), Cas Anvar (last seen in "Room"), Liron Levo (last seen in "This Must Be the Place"), Yaakov Zada Daniel, Ohad Knoller (last seen in "Munich"), Rotem Keinan, Lana Ettinger, Yoav Levi (last seen in "Zero Dark Thirty"), Johanan Herson, Daniel Wandelt, Gal Friedman, Barnaby Metschurat (last seen in "Race"), Werner Daehn (last seen in "Enemy at the Gates"), Doron Tsabari, Dayani Rahmani, Arie Tcherner, Sogand Sara Fakheri, Eitan Mansuri, Tamar Gov Ari, Sarit Haimyan, Farzana Cohen, Rona Navon. 

RATING: 3 out of 10 Isuzu pickup trucks (are they THAT common in Iran?)