Tradecraft: William Boyd's Cold War Berlin-Set SPY CITY Series Gets Revived with Dominic Cooper

Several years ago, around the same time that Olen Steinhauer's Berlin Station was announced, another Berlin-set spy series from another major novelist was also announced: William Boyd's Cold War-set Spy City. But it sadly never came to be at that time. Now, five years later, though, it's finally happening!

Originally set up as a 10-part series at Gaumont, Deadline reports that Boyd's vision will finally come to life as a 6-part series for Miramax and Germany's H&V Entertainment and ZDF. And it will star a face who's become quite familiar to spy fans--Dominic Cooper. Cooper starred as Tony Stark's father, Howard Stark, in Captain America: The First Avenger, and again on the excellent late 1940s-set spy TV series Agent Carter. He also played Ian Fleming in the BBC miniseries Fleming. He'll continue his run of period spy shows in Spy City by playing a British agent dispatched to Berlin in 1961 to root out a traitor in the UK Embassy or among the Allies, shortly before the construction of the Berlin Wall. "The city, declared by Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev as 'the most dangerous place on earth,' is teeming with spies and double agents. One wrong move could trigger the looming threat of nuclear war as American, British and French troops in West Berlin remain separated from their Soviet and East German counterparts by nothing more than an imaginary line."

William Boyd is the author of the James Bond continuations novel Solo, as well as the excellent generational spy saga Restless  (which the author adapted into a miniseries with Agent Carter's Hayley Atwell) and what might very well be my favorite novel so far this century, Any Human Heart. That one's not a spy novel, though it does feature some spying, and Ian Fleming as a minor character. It was also turned into a miniseries with Atwell, as well as Spooks' Matthew Macfadyan and Casino Royale's Tobias Menzies as Fleming. There are a lot of odd connections forming here! An intelligence analyst might even discern some sort of pattern. Can an announcement of Ms. Atwell co-starring in Spy City be far off? So far, Johanna Wokalek (The Baader Meinhof Complex) and Leonie Benesch (The Crown, Babylon Berlin) have been announced besides Cooper. Portuguese filmmaker Miguel Alexandre will direct.

When the project was first announced in its original, slightly longer format, Variety reported that Spy City "sheds light on the personal lives of spies and focuses on a group of men and women of different nationalities and backgrounds who are in the 'hornet’s nest' of divided Berlin." The Hollywood Reporter added, "Spy City is set in the hottest period of the cold war, when Berlin was the center of the global chess game between the powers of East and West. The series is billed as an intimate look at the men and women who risked everything to become spies."

In addition to being an internationally acclaimed novelist, Boyd is also a successful screenwriter. He co-wrote Richard Attenborough's Oscar-nominated biopic Chaplin (1992), adapted other people's novels into Mister Johnson (1990, starring Pierce Brosnan) and Sword of Honor (2001, starring Daniel Craig), and adapted his own novels A Good Man in Africa (1994, starring Sean Connery and Diana Rigg) and Stars and Bars (1988, not starring any James Bond, but starring Daniel Day-Lewis, which is also pretty good), among many other credits. He wrote and directed The Trench (1999), which also starred Craig. Besides Solo, his recent novels include the WWI espionage tale Waiting for Sunrise, the pharmaceutical thriller Ordinary Thunderstorms, and the short story "The Vanishing Game." The latter, Boyd's homage to John Buchan's The 39 Steps, is a great read and a great introduction to the author, as it's available for free (thanks to Land Rover) as an e-book from Amazon and as an audiobook download from Audible. It's a lot of fun, and I highly recommend it. Most of all, though, I can't wait for Spy City! I'm glad it's come back to life.
Thanks to Jack for the heads-up on this!

Trailer: J.K. Simmons' New Berlin-set Spy-Fi Series

Starz has premiered the first trailer for Counterpart, their upcoming Berlin-set, Cold War-inspired spy series with a sci-fi twist. And it looks, frankly, pretty freaking awesome! J.K. Simmons (Burn After Reading) stars–in dual roles, no less!–along with Olivia Williams (The Ghost Writer), Ulrich Thomsen (The World is Not Enough), Stephen Rea (The Honourable Woman), and Sarah Bolger (Stormbreaker). Justin Marks (The Jungle Book) created the series, and Morten Tyldum (The Imitation Game) directs the first two episodes. Simmons plays a low-level bureaucrat at a Berlin-based U.N. intelligence agency whose life changes when he receives a walk-in defector from "the other side"–his own doppelganger. Counterpart premieres January 21, 2018.

Another Trailer for ATOMIC BLONDE

Last week Universal released a second trailer for the Cold Ware Berlin-set Atomic Blonde, and it's even more action-packed than the first one. Based on Antony Johnston's graphic novel The Coldest City and directed by John Wick co-helmer David Leitch, Atomic Blonde is clearly the spy movie to beat this year! Charlize Theron (Fate of the Furious) stars, alongside Sofia Boutella (Kingsman: The Secret Service), James McAvoy (State of Play), John Goodman (Argo), and Toby Jones (Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy).

Two Teasers for the Trailer of Atomic Blonde

Universal has released two short, tantalizing teasers for a longer, red-band trailer set to drop tomorrow for Atomic Blonde, which I've said before will be the spy movie of the summer. Seriously, everyone is going to be talking about David (John Wick) Leitch's film version of Antony Johnston and Sam Hart's Cold War Berlin-set Oni graphic novel The Coldest City (even despite the unfortunate title change). Why? Well, take a look at these micro-teasers and see for yourself! Charlize Theron (The Fate of the Furious), Sofia Boutella (Kingsman: The Secret Service), James McAvoy (State of Play), John Goodman (Argo), and Toby Jones (Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy) star.

You'll be hearing a lot more about Atomic Blonde once it premieres next week at SXSW! It opens nationwide in July.

The Coldest City Warms Up to Atomic Blonde, and Charlize Keeps Spying

The bad news is that, according to Deadline, Focus Features has changed the title of their Cold War Berlin comic book adaptation The Coldest City to Atomic Blonde. They had one of the coolest spy titles ever, and now they've got a Roller Derby competitor. (Nothing against Derby Dolls; they just aren't the same as spies.) They had a brand, and now they have a handicap. The good news, though, is that the movie looks awesome enough to overcome a title like that! (Perhaps it's just so damn cool that the studio thought it was only fair to handicap it?) Adding ammo to my suspicion of the movie's actual awesomeness and the studio's confidence in their product is the news that they will debut it at the hip South by Southwest film festival four and a half months before its July 28 opening, allowing plenty of time to build positive buzz. (And in another sign of confidence, they had previously moved up that opening from August to July, at the height of summer.)

Atomic Blonde is based on the Oni Press graphic novel The Coldest City, by Antony Johnston (Alex Rider, Queen & Country) and Sam Hart. While the moody, black and white comic (to which Johnston recently published a prequel, The Coldest Winter) played up the chilly, brooding Cold War paranoia of 1989 Berlin, it's clear from the (thankfully very cool) poster that the movie adaptation (penned by Kurt Jonstad and directed by David Leitch, half of the duo behind the ultra-stylish actionfest John Wick and the man tapped to direct Deadpool 2) instead plays up the neon MTV aspects of that decade. So perhaps it will be a little more Deutschland 83 than The Americans as 1980s-set spy entertainment goes. I think it's safe to say that we can expect a bit more action from the film, penned by Kurt Jonstad (Act of Valor), than the comic, which was more concerned with the treacherous internecine bureaucracy of Cold War espionage. Reigning action queen Charlize Theron (Mad Max: Fury Road) stars as MI6 agent Lorraine Broughton, dispatched to Berlin to unmask a mole on the eve of the fall of the Wall. James McAvoy (State of Play), Sofia Boutella (Kingsman), John Goodman (Argo), Til Schweiger (Inglourious Basterds) and Toby Jones (Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy) round out the impressive cast roster. Trust me, even with that title, this is going to be the coolest spy movie of 2017!

Theron, meanwhile, appears to be addicted to spying. In a separate story, Deadline reports that Universal has optioned Need to Know, a forthcoming spy novel from former CIA analyst Karen Cleveland, for her to star in and produce. (She also produces Atomic Blonde through her Denver & Delilah Films shingle.) According to the trade, the thriller follows "a wife and mother who works as a CIA analyst. One morning while digitally searching files in hopes of unmasking a Russian sleeper cell in the U.S., she makes a shocking discovery that threatens her job, her family and her life." There is no publisher yet set, but the manuscript apparently sparked an intense bidding war. Theron was also previously attached to star in a movie of the Mark Greaney novel The Gray Man, in which the book's generic male super-assassin hero was going to be changed to a woman, but we haven't heard any news on that project since 2015, so I'm not sure if she's still involved or not. The actress will next be seen in The Fate of the Furious, a project that reunites her with her Italian Job director and co-star, F. Gary Gray and Jason Statham. (The trailers make it look like this movie easily tops Die Another Day's car chase on ice.)

Tradecraft: Richard Armitage Spies Again as Cast Comes Together for Olen Steinhauer's Berlin Station

Richard Armitage has already toplined two spy series, having done a stint on Spooks/MI-5, and starred in the original UK version of Strike Back (review here). And now he's re-enlisted for intelligence duty to star in the EPIX series Berlin Station from spy novelist Olen Steinhauer (announced in May), as The Hollywood Reporter reported earlier this fall. Now, according to Deadline, the full cast has come together for the 10-part contemporary espionage drama. And it's a very good cast! Spy vets Tamlyn Tomita (24, The Agency), Leland Orser (Taken, 24), Richard Dillane (Argo, MI-5), and Bernhard Schütz (A Most Wanted Man) have rounded out a cast that already includes Armitage, Michelle Forbes (24, Global Frequency), Rhys Ifans (Snowden) and, as reported in July, Richard Jenkins (Burn After Reading).

According to the trade, Berlin Station follows Daniel Meyer (Armitage), a newly anointed case officer freshly arrived at the CIA's Berlin Station to uncover the source of a leak who has supplied information to a Snowden-like whistleblower. Guided by a jaded veteran case officer, Hector DeJean (Ifans) — a "darkly charming, tenacious agent" who works for Station Chief Steven Frost (Jenkins)" — Meyer "learns to contend with the rough-and-tumble world of the field agent — agent-running, deception, the dangers and moral compromises."

Tomita will play Sandra Abe, "a quiet presence lording over the efficient operation of Berlin Station while having an affair with her boss, Frost." Orser will play Robert Kirsch, "a devoted and successful Deputy Chief who digs intelligence out of the capital through a mix of force, diligence and cleverness." Dillane will play Deputy Liaison Gerald Ellman, "a gentle, reserved man who plans his transfer to Budapest, but finds himself in a position of being collateral damage." Schütz is Hans Richter, "an old-world spy who has risen, against all odds, to the highest ranks of the [German spy agency] BfV." Sounds like an ideal Steinhauer cast of characters!

Steinhauer is one of the best contemporary spy novelists (his "Bureau of Tourism" trilogy is the best spy franchise that Hollywood has so far, inexplicably, left unfilmed, despite multiple flirtations with the project), and this is one of the most exciting spy projects currently in development for me. Amazingly, it's not even the only Berlin-set cable series in the works from a master spy writer! William Boyd (author of the wartime espionage tale Restless and the James Bond continuation novel Solo, as well as my favorite novel of this century, Any Human Heart) is masterminding a Cold War period 10-part series, Spy City, for Gaumont International. I can't wait to see both.

Tradecraft: Lietch to Direct Coldest City Solo

Variety reports that John Wick co-director David Leitch will tackle the Oni Comics adaptation The Coldest City solo after the project was originally announced last May as a joint venture between him and his Wick partner Chad Stahelski. It was recently announced that Leitch had left the Keanu Reeves sequel, and now we know why. John Wick 2 will begin shooting next month in Budapest and Berlin, and that would have conflicted with the schedule for The Coldest City, so the pair decided to divide and conquor. The Coldest City was written by Kurt Johnstad, adapted from the graphic novel by Antony Johnston (Queen & Country, Alex Rider). Charlize Theron, fresh off a riveting performance in Mad Max: Fury Road, will star in the spy story set at the close of the Cold War in late 1980s Berlin. I'll be curious to see if the Focus Features movie maintains the tone of the gritty, black and white comic, which owed more to the serpentine, double- and triple-cross-filled plots of Len Deighton and John le Carré than to the more action-packed side of the spy genre typified by Fleming and Ludlum, or if the movie will have more action, since that's exactly what Leitch proved himself to be a master of in John Wick.

Tradecraft: James Bond Author William Boyd Creates Cold War Berlin TV Series Spy City

I don't know how I missed this until last week, when it was mentioned as an aside in a Deadline article about a new Gaumont series, Crosshair, but way back in October 2014 it was announced that William Boyd, author of the James Bond novel Solo, would create and write a Cold War espionage TV drama called Spy City! Boyd's other books include the excellent generational spy saga Restless  (which the author adapted into a miniseries with Agent Carter's Hayley Atwell) and what might be my favorite novel so far this century, Any Human Heart. (That one's not a spy novel, though it does feature some spying, and Ian Fleming as a minor character. It was also turned into a miniseries with Atwell, as well as Spooks' Matthew Macfadyan and Casino Royale's Tobias Menzies as Fleming.) Variety and The Hollywood Reporter both reported last year that Boyd would create, write, and showrun the 10-episode English language series set in early Sixties Berlin for the French studio. Germany's Odeon will co-produce, and Pascal Chaumeil (Spiral, A Long Way Down) will direct. According to Variety, Spy City "sheds light on the personal lives of spies and focuses on a group of men and women of different nationalities and backgrounds who are in the 'hornet’s nest' of divided Berlin." THR adds, "Spy City is set in the hottest period of the cold war, when Berlin was the center of the global chess game between the powers of East and West. The series is billed as an intimate look at the men and women who risked everything to become spies."

Divided Berlin is, of course, the absolute perfect setting for a cable series, and I'm really surprised it's taken someone this long to do it! HBO shot a pilot in 2012 for one called The Missionary (co-created by Malcolm Gladwell), but it didn't go to series. And it was announced last month that Epix had greenlit a spy series called Berlin Station created and written by Olen Steinhauer, but that's contemporary. Still, between the two of them, that means that two of my very favorite contemporary novelists both have upcoming 10-episode spy series set in Berlin! And I'm supremely excited for both of them.

Gaumont TV France, whose sister company Gaumont TV International is behind NBC's Hannibal and Netflix's Hemlock Grove, plans to produce one to two English-language European series a year beginning with Spy City. (And Crosshair makes the first two both espionage series!) "In the past few months, many more European-based projects have started coming our way," Gaumont CEO Christopher Riandee told Variety. "Spy City is the perfect English language project for us to produce in Europe and we are thrilled that William Boyd and Pascal Chaumeil are attached to this project,” commented Riandee.  “In addition, with Elizabeth [Dreyer, new head of international co-productions] on board we will be able to focus on additional strong international projects financed and produced out of Europe.”

In addition to being an internationally acclaimed novelist, Boyd is also a successful screenwriter. He co-wrote Richard Attenborough's Oscar-nominated biopic Chaplin (1992), adapted other people's novels into Mister Johnson (1990, starring Pierce Brosnan) and Sword of Honor (2001, starring Daniel Craig), and adapted his own novels A Good Man in Africa (1994, starring Sean Connery and Diana Rigg) and Stars and Bars (1988, not starring any James Bond, but starring Daniel Day-Lewis, which is also pretty good), among many other credits. He wrote and directed The Trench (1999), which also starred Craig. Besides Solo, his recent novels include the WWI espionage tale Waiting for Sunrise, the pharmaceutical thriller Ordinary Thunderstorms, and the short story "The Vanishing Game." The latter, Boyd's homage to John Buchan's The 39 Steps, is a great read and a great introduction to the author, as it's available for free (thanks to Land Rover) as an e-book from Amazon and as an audiobook download from Audible. It's a lot of fun, and I highly recommend it. Most of all, though, I can't wait for Spy City!

First Trailers for Cold War Spy Show Deutschland 83

Sundance Channel has started aggressively advertising for Deutschland 83, their Cold War miniseries event that will mark the first ever German-language program broadcast on American television that we first heard about in February. Set (naturally) in Germany in 1983, Deutschland 83 is a teen coming of age story mixed with an espionage drama unfolding against an ever-escalating Cold War as East and West came the closest to WWIII since the Cuban Missile Crisis. Filled with period-appropriate pop music, it should make an excellent counterpart to The Americans. It looks sort of like that show re-imagined for MTV Europe. Watch a cool teaser with no footage and a more traditional trailer on the Sundance website, or check out a tongue-in-cheek, narration-heavy trailer full of tradecraft below:



This looks pretty great! Deutschland 83 premieres next week, June 17, at 11/10c on Sundance.

Tradecraft: Charlize Theron to Star in The Coldest City, Based on Antony Johnston's Graphic Novel

Well, this is cool! Deadline reports that Focus Features has bought the North American rights to a film version of Antony Johnston's Cold War Berlin-set graphic novel The Coldest City (review here), and "has committed to a wide release." The graphic novel (and I hope the movie as well) is set in the final days before the fall of the Berlin Wall. Personally, I feel like divided Berlin was just as interesting in the 1980s as the 1960s, but we get far too few period pieces taking advantage of that fascinating time, so I'm particularly looking forward to this one! Charlize Theron will star as British agent Lorainne Broughton, who's got a ticking clock to solve the murder of a fellow agent and recover some vital intelligence before the climate in Berlin thaws forever. John Wick's David Leitch and Chad Stahelski will direct, and Kurt Johnstad (300) will pen the script. That behind-the-scenes team would seem to bode a more action-oriented tale than the refreshingly cerebral story of Johnston's graphic novel (more in the Len Deighton tradition than Ian Fleming), but it's a talented group of people, so I'll give them credit for more than just what we've seen them do before. Johnstad really impressed me with Act of Valor. In that movie, he managed to assemble a serviceable spy plot out of what basically amounted to footage of Special Forces teams training, so just imagine what he'll be able to do with source material of this caliber! Johnston is a longtime spy fan whose other comic book credits in the genre also include an arc of Greg Rucka's stellar Queen & Country and adaptations of Anthony Horowitz's Alex Rider graphic novels.

New Spy DVDs Out This Week From Warner Archive: The Scorpio Letters and Escape From East Berlin

The Warner Archive Collection have been dipping into their spy catalog again recently, and that makes me very happy! Following last month's long awaited made-on-demand release of the elusive David Niven Eurospy title Where the Spies Are, WAC has released two more rare Sixties Cold War movies this week. The Scorpio Letters stars Alex Cord (Airwolf, The Etruscan Kills Again), Laurence Naismith (The Persuaders!, Diamonds Are Forever) and Goldfinger's Golden Girl Shirley Eaton. The 1967 ABC TV movie is a real rarity. To be honest, I hardly know anything about it, so I'll let WAC's description do the talking:

Who is Scorpio and what's his connection to the suicide of a British spy? These are the questions Joe Christopher (Alex Cord, TV 's Airwolf) has been hired to answer. Working for one of England's Intelligence Services, the American ex-cop discovers Scorpio is an extortionist who pressured the agent into taking his life. Teamed with rival operative Phoebe Stewart (Shirley Eaton, Goldfinger), Christopher sets out to smash Scorpio's operation, unaware that the blackmailer knows of their plans and intends to strike the fatal blow first. Based on the novel by Victor Canning, The Scorpio Letters was directed by M-G-M veteran Richard Thorpe (Ivanhoe) and scored by ... Dave Grusin [The Girl From U.N.C.L.E.] in his feature film debut.

Escape from East Berlin (1962) isn't actually about spies per se, but it is about escaping from East Berlin at the height of that Cold War, and that's still very much a subject of interest to this spy fan. Shot in cinema verite style by noir master Robert Siodmak (The Killers, Criss Cross) and based on true events, Escape From East Berlin is a gripping drama of a divided city. I was lucky enough to see it at LACMA several years ago on a double bill with Funeral in Berlin, and I've been hoping for a DVD release ever since. Here's WAC's description:

When his friend Gunther Jurgena attempts to break out of East Germany by crashing his truck through the Berlin Wall, Kurt Schröder (Don Murray) watches in horror as he is shot dead by the border guards. So when Gunther's sister Erika (Christine Kaufmann) follows her brother and barely escapes the same fate, Kurt offers to help. Aided by 26 family members and neighbors who also wish to defect, Kurt tunnels under the Wall, unaware that Erika's parents have betrayed them and that armed troops are about to move in. Based on an actual mass breakout attempt that occurred in January 1962, Escape from East Berlin is a masterful tale of thrills and suspense.

Both MOD titles are available directly from the Warner Archive Collection (The Scorpio Letters, Escape From East Berlin), or from Amazon (The Scorpio Letters, Escape from East Berlin). Retail is $21.99, but both vendors offer discounts.

Tradecraft: Sundance to Air German Period Spy Series Deutschland 83

The success of The Americans has now led to U.S. networks seeking foreign period spy series, which is a very exciting development! According to The Hollywood Reporter, Sundance TV has picked up an 8-part German language spy drama, Deutschland 83, at the Berlinale European Flim Market. It will air in the U.S. later this year (and sooner on the German network RTL), making it the first German language series to run on American TV according to the trade. As the title would indicate, the Cold War show is set in 1983. Here's the official synopsis from the Berlinale website:

A NATO exercise, the peace movement and German New Wave music – young and inexperienced spy Moritz Stamm is sent to the West by the East German secret services and finds himself caught between personal and ideological fronts.

I'm very excited to see this! That sounds like an ideal cultural mash-up to me. And Berlin-set spy tales are always my favorites. Furthermore, while there are many great ones set in the Sixties, I find the early Eighties a particularly fascinating period of the Cold War, when tensions rose again and Berlin became even more of a powder keg than it had been. Len Deighton's Samson novels capture this era nicely, but I've always found it under-explored on television. And it will be particularly interesting to see it from a German point of view. It sounds like the creative talent involved has been thoroughly detail-oriented. From the trade:

Deutschland 83 was shot mainly in and around Berlin with a special focus on an exact re-creation of West Germany in 1983, when the country was at the center of the Cold War. “Finding locations hasn’t been easy,” says [director] Jorg Winger, 45, who co-created the show with his American-born writer wife, Anna Winger, 44. “So much has changed since the fall of the Berlin Wall, there are almost no houses left in the East that look like they did back then.” The production team ... finally found a sleepy suburb to the east of Berlin and a house where the furniture, and even the wallpaper, hadn’t changed in decades. It plays stand-in for the family home of Moritz, a young East German man (newcomer Jonas Nay) who is recruited to infiltrate the West German military as a spy.

The idea of an East German spy in the West German military ranks comes from Jorg Winger's personal experience. He tells the Reporter that he spent a chilling Christmas during his military service for the West listening to a Russian radio broadcast in which the Soviet broadcaster wished all the men in his unit a Merry Christmas... by name. This event led them to realize that they had a spy in their midst.

All told, this sounds like it has the makings of a truly compelling Cold War spy show, and I'm so grateful that we Americans will finally have access to some of the cool spy television coming out of Europe.

Tradecraft: Paul Greengrass Ponders Some Serious Tunneling

Paul Greengrass is amassing quite a stack of espionage scripts on his development pile. As previously reported, he's already hard at work on an adaptation of the non-fiction spy memoir Agent Storm, and this summer he made the surprise announcement that he was reconsidering his long-held stance on never returning to the franchise that really put him on the map and would (hopefully) re-team with Matt Damon on a new Bourne movie which he would be writing himself. Yesterday Variety reported that the Bourne Ultimatum and Green Zone director has added a Cold War Berlin story to his growing pile. According to the trade, FilmNation Entertainment has acquired the screen rights to a book proposal (that's right; it's not even a book yet, just a proposal!) by journalist Greg Mitchell called The Tunnels. Mark Gordon (The Matador, The Man Who Wouldn't Die) will produce. The Tunnels is purportedly an "untold" true story of a harrowing escape from East Berlin during the days of the Wall about a group of West Germans funded by American news networks on an expedition to get their loved ones out of the East. (The trade doesn't say so, but I'm guessing the plan involves tunnels.) I hope this one happens. Personally, I love Wall-Crossing stories, and we don't get nearly enough of them nowadays.

Movie Review: The Berlin File (2013)

The Berlin File may be confusing, but it’s also quite a good spy film. (The two have never been mutually exclusive, after all.) It’s a South Korean movie, but it’s set—and filmed—in Berlin. The location is more than just title fodder (in Korea the film is simply titled Berlin), too. The iconic city that played host to so many Communist-East-vs.-Capitalist-West spy movies during the Cold War makes an ideal backdrop for today’s most relevant Communist-vs.-Capitalist struggle, that of the two Koreas. Against such historic spy landmarks as the Brandenburg Gate, a North Korean and South Korean agent (and, true to the genre, quite a lot of other parties) hunt each other in a compelling game of cat and mouse as writer/director Ryu Seung-wan drops plenty of allusions to his Cold War-era forebears, from Bond to Bourne to le Carré to Deighton. (The recent Bourne movies are the most obvious inspirations.)

As the film opens, South Korean spooks monitor a meeting taking place in a Berlin hotel between a Russian arms dealer, an Arab terrorist and a North Korean agent so good he’s not in any database (a “ghost,” as they refer to him). Unsurprisingly, that many bad guys in one room is going to attract the attentions of other supposedly friendly governments as well. Although it’s unclear exactly who is who during the chaotic sequence itself, it eventually becomes clear that the CIA and the Mossad are also interested in this conference, as well as the primary South Korean agent’s support team. With that many lit fuses hovering this powder keg, it’s inevitable that things won’t go as planned. Sure enough, the meeting erupts into chaos, and gunfire, foot chases and hand-to-hand combat ensue. As the North Korean agent, Pyo Jong-Seong (Ha Jung-woo) attempts to escape via the hotel roof, he’s intercepted by South Korean agent Jeong Jin-soo (Han Suk-kyu). The two men have enough time to size up one another (the basis of any antagonists-bound-to-work-together framework) before Jin-soo gets the upper hand and makes his getaway.

Jin-soo has a wife at home, Ryeon Jung-hee, who feels neglected. Yet she herself is the pawn of Jin-soo’s boss, the North Korean ambassador. (This “ghost” reports directly to the ambassador.) Her job is to be his translator at a business meeting, but he requires her to go further and seduce a potential German business partner in order to get a market advantage and whatever intel she can pick up. The ambassador’s motives, in turn, are questioned by Pyongyang (or possibly by another faction within the North Korean government), and this casts aspersions on Jung-hee as well. I won’t even go into who’s bugging the meeting and why! It’s all so complicated as to be very hard to follow (even harder via subtitles), and it’s possible that the intricate web doesn’t really make any sense at all, but to me the web itself is more crucial to the success of this sort of spy story than the sense it makes. At any rate, Pyongyang sends a cleaner out to Berlin, Dong Myung-soo (Ryu Seong-beom) (introduced in an exciting fight aboard a train in further accord with genre traditions) to make sense of this situation and eliminate any loose ends. Myung-soo informs Jin-soo that his wife’s loyalty (and, by extension, his own) is in question, forcing him to choose between his wife and his country. Despite being a patriot, Jin-soo finds himself with no choice but to go on the run with Jung-hee, making their escape across Berlin rooftops and amidst much gunfire. If it seems like I’ve given away too much at this point, don’t worry; everything I’ve encapsulated up until now is merely the setup! I recount here it in so much detail because I relished the (possibly unnecessary) complexity.

The purpose of all this setup is to force Jin-soo to go rogue, and eventually team up with his North Korean counterpart, Jong-Seong, forming a classic action movie odd couple. This pairing creates ripples affecting various factions from the South and North alike, along with the Arabs from the beginning and the CIA. The actor playing Jong-Seong’s CIA ally is unfortunately kind of awful. Luckily, his white face is probably enough to make him convincing to Korean audiences for whom his English dialogue is no doubt subtitled anyway, but English speakers are forced to put up with enough bad line readings to wish the filmmakers had bothered to fly in an actual Hollywood character actor for the part. (Surely William Sadler is available for this kind of job?) Spy fans, however, will likely cut him some slack because he uses a le Carré paperback as a way to identify himself to his contacts!

The elaborate spy scenario is, of course, all basically a clotheshorse on which to hang a number of action setpieces, just like in an American movie. When such setpieces take place against a Berlin backdrop, I tend to be satisfied. (It also helps that, with the exception of some dodgy CGI fire, most of them are quite well executed—but that’s almost secondary for me to the locale.) The action is fairly violent, especially in the finale, and there is a particularly brutal torture scene. But even squeamish spy fans will still find plenty to like in The Berlin File. Its themes of divided loyalties and betrayals both personal and professional, along with its gleefully labyrinthine plot, are enough to make you believe it could be a product of the Cold War. And when it comes to spy movies, that’s a very good thing indeed. The Berlin File is a thoroughly entertaining throwback that updates classic themes and a classic setting to suit the very current geopolitical conflicts of today.

Look At... The Berlin Wall

Network recently relaunched their website as Networkonair, and one of the primary features of the new site is their streaming "On Demand" section. I really enjoyed the episode of Scotland Yard they posted there (now gone), but  it's another video I'm directing you to today. Anyone who reads as many books as I do about divided, Cold War-era Berlin should definitely check out the 10-minute episode of  the 1960s theatrical documentary short subject series Look At Life entitled "The Wall." It contains lots and lots of contemporary glimpses of the Berlin Wall, in color no less. It makes a great supplement to famous Berlin-set spy novels like Funeral in Berlin, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold and The Quiller Memorandum. I don't know how long it will be available for, though; these free streaming episodes don't remain for too long on the site. This segment comes from the forthcoming Region 2 PAL DVD set Look At Life Volume 6: World Affairs, which also includes a short entitled "James Bond's Island" examining Early Sixties Jamaica. I'd sure like to see that one! As a matter of fact, I'd like to see all of these.

New, Longer Trailer for The Berlin File

There's a new, longer trailer for the Korean spy film I blogged about last week, The Berlin File. I was already sold on the movie, but this trailer manages to make it look even better! The Berlin File opens February 15 in select U.S. cities.

Trailer: The Berlin File

Here's a very cool looking spy movie opening next month in America that I wasn't even aware of until I saw this trailer this weekend at a Koreatown movie theater. Like Istanbul, I'm a sucker for just about any Berlin-set spy movie, but this one actually looks particularly good. According to Deadline, The Berlin File opens in Korea at the end of January and in select cities in the U.S. on February 15.