BEFORE: I'm going to put a pin in the Russell Crowe track, and I'll circle back to him in a couple of days, because following the Brad Pitt track gets me to one of the "nearly unlinkable" films on my list. These are usually films that have only one major common star, so the only way for me to watch them, while still following my own rules, is to wait for two more films with that actor or actress, and sandwich it in between them. Anyway, that's tomorrow's film, today's film at least had a few linking possibilities, actors like Jared Harris and Simon McBurney keep turning up again and again. Brad Pitt, not so much, because at this point, of the (approximately) 35 major movie roles he's had, after tonight I will have seen 34 of them, leaving only "The Tree of Life". Someday I'll have to do a major accounting of the top stars, to see who's made it into the countdown the most times over 10 years - it's probably not Brad Pitt, but then this leads to the question - who is it?
THE PLOT: A Canadian intelligence officer in North Africa encounters a female French Resistance fighter on a deadly mission behind enemy lines. When they reunite in London, their relationship is tested by the pressures of war.
AFTER: I had an interesting experience two days ago when I got an e-mail from a contact at a film festival in Australia. I'd met him a few years back when he visited NY, and he confessed to me last week that before that, there was some discussion in Australia about whether I existed. Even though I'd dealt with him and his staff several times over the years, because my boss is an independent animator who has a reputation for doing everything himself, even though he has a staff that assists with both production and administration. But when he's out on tour, he probably speaks so much in the first person - "I animated this film" or "this company hired me to direct a music video" that some people naturally think of him as a one-man studio. So the theory went that any time he said, "My office manager will handle that..." or "My office manager says I have to charge a higher fee..." it was some kind of dodge, he made up a phony name for a fake office manager to cover the fact that these were his decisions. Sort of like Trump did when he supposedly took calls during his campaign, pretending to be a made-up campaign manager.
I took this in stride, trying to see the humor in this, but then found myself in the unique position of proving to people half a world away that I existed. Even after one person from the festival met me in person, the rumors in Australia persisted that I was a made-up entity. So I sent them a link to my listing in the IMDB, because those are very hard to fake, to prove that I had both producing credits and voice-acting credits. My boss might be able to send e-mails under my name, but no way could he do voices for animated characters in French, German and SoCal accents like I have over the years. I'm not on Facebook or Instagram, but at least I'm on Twitter and I have a LinkedIn profile, so I could at least point to that. But it's an interesting problem in this modern world, with people hiding between avatars, TwitterBots and fake Facebook profiles, how do we know anyone these days is who they say they are?
Now think about how bad this same problem was, even BEFORE there was an internet. Back in World War II there was no way to look up someone's photo if they gave you a phony name. Governments had to keep hard-copy dossiers on enemy agents, complete with photos and all known aliases, but if someone kept changing their name and/or moving around, there was just no way to keep up with that. In the latter half of this film, after our Canadian agent hero has married the French secret agent he worked on a mission with, his handlers tell him that she may in fact be a German spy who took over the identity of the French spy. However, it's possible that this information is false, and is merely a test of this man's loyalty. Is he not only willing to suspect everyone around him, including his wife, but to act appropriately once suspicion is placed on her?
The first part of that, no problem. It's easy enough to assume that she's fooled him, because she's already proven what a flair she has for intelligence work. But when directed to continue to act normal, and to plant false information where she can find it, then wait for further instructions, he fails miserably. Instead he goes rogue trying to contact former and current French agents who knew her before, and then takes matters into his own hands, disobeying orders in an attempt to get to the truth sooner. Jeez, man, it's just one more weekend, couldn't he wait for Monday's intelligence report? He puts himself and every other agent in jeopardy, just to shake out the truth two days ahead of schedule, and that's not cool.
And if she does turn out to be a German spy, supposedly it would be up to him to take her out, or face charges of treason himself. I'm not sure this would be genuine spy protocol, because why take the chance that a husband wouldn't be emotionally able to kill his own wife. Wouldn't the spy agencies have someone else available to take an agent down, because of the possibility that this guy couldn't do it? Besides, it would make more sense to keep an enemy agent in place, to either keep feeding her (and therefore the enemy) false information and also have the opportunity to find out more about her contacts and other enemy agents nearby. So this "burn notice" policy seems very suspect.
Also starring Marion Cotillard (last seen in "Assassin's Creed"), Jared Harris (last heard in "The Boxtrolls"), Matthew Goode (last seen in "Leap Year"), Lizzy Caplan (last seen in "Orange County"), Anton Lesser (last seen in "Miss Potter"), August Diehl (last seen in "Inglourious Basterds"), Camille Cottin, Charlotte Hope (last seen in "The Invisible Woman"), Marion Bailey (last seen in "Mr. Turner"), Simon McBurney (last seen in "Body of Lies"), Daniel Betts (also carrying over from "War Machine"), Thierry Frémont, Raffey Cassidy (last seen in "Snow White and the Huntsman"), Vincent Latorre, Anton Blake, Josh Dylan, Iain Batchelor.
RATING: 5 out of 10 air-raid sirens
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