Businessman Greville Wynne gets recruited by the intelligence services to communicate with OIeg Penkovsky, a high-level source in the USSR. He does it for a while, and he and the source become friends, then it all goes predictably wrong. There's about as much interest in that summary as there is in this movie. It's like they took a template for a spy movie and forgot to fill in any of the detail. It's all passably done - good period sets and props, no terrible acting - but there's nothing for us or the actors to get our teeth into.
The plot is moved along at crucial moments by hasty montages which add to the generic, hand-waving feel of the whole thing. Some men did spy stuff and hoped not to get caught, with predictable results. It makes MI6 and the CIA look naive for expecting the KGB to be stupid, and it fails to convey the weight and difficulty of what Penkovsky did given his position. The characters aren't well enough built for you to start feeling for them. In all, it feels like the movie equivalent of an introductory paragraph on Wikipedia.
The film is based on a true story which must have been full of suffering and drama, but it managed to make the story seem less interesting and consequential than it actually was. A hurried film and a wasted opportunity.
The plot is moved along at crucial moments by hasty montages which add to the generic, hand-waving feel of the whole thing. Some men did spy stuff and hoped not to get caught, with predictable results. It makes MI6 and the CIA look naive for expecting the KGB to be stupid, and it fails to convey the weight and difficulty of what Penkovsky did given his position. The characters aren't well enough built for you to start feeling for them. In all, it feels like the movie equivalent of an introductory paragraph on Wikipedia.
The film is based on a true story which must have been full of suffering and drama, but it managed to make the story seem less interesting and consequential than it actually was. A hurried film and a wasted opportunity.