Trailer for Park Chan-Wook's John le Carré Miniseries THE LITTLE DRUMMER GIRL

AMC has released the first full trailer for their latest BBC co-production, a follow-up to the hugely successful 2016 John le Carré adaptation The Night Manager. This time the same producers at The Ink Factory (including le Carré and his sons Simon and Stephen Cornwell) chose to tackle the author's 1983 tome The Little Drummer Girl, and they brought on the great Park Chan-Wook (Oldboy, The Handmaiden) to direct. The imagery in this trailer is as haunting and awesome as I expected from him! The Little Drummer Girl follows Charlie, a naive young English actress recruited by Israeli Intelligence into the "theater of the real"– to infiltrate a Palestinian terror organization. She soon finds herself seduced by both sides and caught in the middle. Florence Pugh (King Lear) stars as Charlie, Alexander Skarsgård (Big Little Lies) plays Becker, the enigmatic stranger who seduces, recruits, and eventually handles her, and Michael Shannon (The Shape of Water) plays a ruthlessly clever, masterfully manipulative, somewhat Smiley-like Mossad spymaster, Kurtz. The miniseries will air on AMC over three consecutive nights in two-hour episodes, premiering November 19 at 9 PM ET/PT. Additional episodes will air at 9 ET/PT on November 20 and November 21. It's expected to play on BBC in the UK around the same time.

Trailer: Netflix's THE ANGEL

Netflix has unveiled the trailer for their real-life 1970s period spy drama The Angel. Israeli helmer Ariel Vroman (Criminal) directs from a script by David Arata (Children of Men), based on the book by Uri Bar-Joseph, The Angel: The Egyptian Spy Who Saved Israel. Marwan Kenzari, Toby Kebbell, Hannah Ware, Waleed Farouq Zuaiter, Maisa Abd Elhadi and Sasson Gabai star in the Middle East-set story of Ashraf Marwan, a spy whose actions demonstrably shaped history. The Angel debuts September 16 on the streaming service.

Tradecraft: AMC Sets Premiere Date for Le Carré Miniseries THE LITTLE DRUMMER GIRL

Jonathan Olley/AMC/Ink Factory

According to Deadline, AMC has set a November premiere date for their flashy BBC co-production The Little Drummer Girl. That's exciting! When it began shooting earlier this year I figured we wouldn't see the latest John le Carré-based miniseries until next year. But the BBC recently released a trailer of its fall premieres, and The Little Drummer Girl was included. Even then, I worried AMC would hold off on U.S. broadcast until early next year, since there was a substantial delay between the UK and U.S. broadcast of the last BBC/AMC le Carré miniseries, The Night Manager. Now we know that won't be the case. (BBC has yet to announce the exact UK broadcast date, but viewers can expect it in the fall.)

Jonathan Olley/AMC/Ink Factory

Based on le Carré's 1983 novel, The Little Drummer Girl follows Charlie, a naive young English actress recruited by Israeli Intelligence into the "theater of the real"– to infiltrate a Palestinian terror organization. She soon finds herself seduced by both sides and caught in the middle.

Jonathan Olley/AMC/Ink Factory

Florence Pugh (King Lear) stars as Charlie, Alexander Skarsgård (Big Little Lies) plays Becker, the enigmatic stranger who seduces, recruits, and eventually handles her, and Michael Shannon (The Shape of Water) plays a ruthlessly clever, masterfully manipulative, somewhat Smiley-like Mossad spymaster, Kurtz. Most excitingly, the brilliant Korean director Park Chan-wook (Oldboy, The Handmaiden) directs all six episodes. As with The Night Manager, le Carré and his sons  Simon and Stephen Cornwell (principals in the Ink Factory) are among the producers. Locations in the novel include Britain, Greece, Germany, Austria, Israel, and Libya. I'm not sure which ones make it into the miniseries (key book locations were changed and omitted from The Night Manager), but the production definitely filmed at the Acropolis, the first shoot ever to be granted permission to do so.

I can't wait till November!

Jonathan Olley/AMC/Ink Factory

Tradecraft: BETHLEHEM Director to Adapt Mossad Tale THE ENGLISH TEACHER

Yuval Adler's Bethlehem (2013) is the best spy movie of the last decade that no one has seen. It's truly a must-watch for any fans of gritty, le Carré-esque espionage yarns with only shades of grey and no easy answers. (It also made my list of the 10 Best Spy Movies of the last 10 years.) Which is why it's great news that Adler will be returning to the genre with an adaptation of former Israeli intelligence officer Yiftach Reicher Atir's bestselling novel The English Teacher! Only it won't be called that. According to Deadline, Adler's film version will be called The Operative (admittedly more generic), and star Eric Bana (Hanna, Munich) and Diane Kruger (Inglourious Basterds). Though it's been in my stack for a while, I still haven't read The English Teacher. (This news will probably inspire me to move it up a few notches!) But here's the publisher's description:

After attending her father’s funeral, former Mossad agent Rachel Goldschmitt empties her bank account and disappears. But when she makes a cryptic phone call to her former handler, Ehud, the Mossad sends him to track her down. Finding no leads, he must retrace her career as a spy to figure out why she abandoned Mossad before she can do any damage to Israel. But he soon discovers that after living under cover for so long, an agent’s assumed identity and her real one can blur, catching loyalty, love, and truth between them. In the midst of a high-risk, high-stakes investigation, Ehud begins to question whether he ever knew his agent at all.

Park Chan-Wook to Direct le Carré Miniseries THE LITTLE DRUMMER GIRL, According to Daily Mail

Bart Forbes' frontispiece for the 1983 Knopf limited edition

I don't normally post news items originating in UK tabloids, but this is too dynamite to let pass. And besides, it comes from The Daily Mail's Baz Bamigboye, who has proven time and again to be the exception to the tabloid rule, and provided many solid scoops in the past. His track record with spy movies (and particularly James Bond) is especially good. According to Bamigboye, the next BBC/AMC John le Carré miniseries production following the enormous success of The Night Manager will be The Little Drummer Girl, based on the author's 1983 novel. Once again, The Ink Factory (le Carré's sons' production company) will produce, and once again they've proven to have impeccable taste when it comes to directors. Bamigboye reports that legendary Korean director Park Chan-Wook will helm! For those of you familiar with the auteur's work, let that sink in and bask in the sheer awesomeness of the possibility. For those of you who don't know, Park, like Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy helmer Tomas Alfredson, is a master visual stylist. While he has directed a spy-themed movie before, 2000's Joint Security Area, he is better known for his Vengeance Trilogy, which includes his most famous film, Oldboy. He also helmed the stellar and unique vampire tale Thirst, the Hitchcockian English-language suspense film Stoker, and the sublime 2016 erotic con artist thriller The Handmaiden, based on the Sarah Waters novel Fingersmith. (For my money, that one's his masterpiece to date.) I would be excited about any Park Chan-Wook miniseries. And I would be excited (obviously!) about any John le Carré miniseries. Put together, I'm ecstatic! I really, really hope that Bamigboye is on the money this time.

According to the report, British actress Florence Pugh, who shot to fame with this year's Lady Macbeth and will next be seen as Cordelia to Anthony Hopkins' King Lear in a star-studded BBC production, will take on the lead role of Charlie, a naive young actress recruited by Israeli Intelligence into the "theatre of the real"--to infiltrate a Palestinian terror organization. She soon finds herself seduced by both sides and caught in the middle. Bamigboye reports that the 6-part miniseries will shoot in 2018 and retain the novel's late Seventies/early Eighties setting (though the subject matter obviously still rings topical today). The Little Drummer Girl was previously filmed by George Roy Hill as a feature in 1984, starring a notoriously miscast Diane Keaton.

Locations in the novel include London, Mykonos, Munich, Vienna, Bonn and Tel Aviv, but there's no way of knowing at this stage which ones will be used in the miniseries. (Key book locations were changed and omitted from The Night Manager.) Bamigboye does report, however, that Park "intends to make good use of locations."

This is a very, very exciting project that I'll certainly be keeping a close eye on. Let's hope for some official announcements soon!

Thanks to Casey and Clarissa for the heads-up on this one!

Tradecraft: Paramount Acquires Period Spy Thriller For Bad Robot

Deadline reports that Paramount has optioned a spec script by Patrick Aison called Wunderkind for J.J. Abrams' Bad Robot production company. Abrams and Bryan Burk will produce. According to the trade blog, "Wunderkind is an elevated two-handed action thriller set in the 1970s following a young Nazi hunter with the CIA and an older Nazi hunter working for the Mossad. The two become reluctantly intertwined in their hunt and shocking twists result." I hope this gets made. I'm always pleased to see Cold War-era spy movies hit the screen, and last year's Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy proved that the Seventies is a particularly rich era to mine in that genre.

New Spy DVDs Out This Week

This week sees the release of The Debt (movie review here) on DVD and Blu-ray from Universal. The Debt follows a team of Mossad agents hunting a Nazi war criminal in Sixties East Berlin... and then dealing with the consequences of their Cold War actions decades later. Both formats include the featurettes "A Look Inside The Debt," "Every Secret Has A Price: Helen Mirren In The Debt" and "The Berlin Affair: The Triangle At The Center Of The Debt," as well as an audio commentary with director John Madden and producer Kris Thykier. Retail is $29.98 for the DVD and $34.98 for the Blu-ray, though naturally both are substantially cheaper at all the usual online vendors.

The Mission: Impossible "Extreme Trilogy" comes on both Blu-ray and DVD, too, though most people who want to no doubt already own the DVDs. I'm not really sure what qualifies these three feature films spun out of the classic TV series as "extreme" (dangling, I guess? They're not xXx!), but I do know that one of the reasons why I love Peter Graves is because he was never extreme. (Though some of his shirts and coats were.) Extreme or not, the cover art is actually pretty cool, and this set certainly makes for a good way to accumulate the first three movies at a very reasonable price just in time for the new fourth entry from director Brad Bird. The Mission: Impossibe Extreme Blu-ray Trilogy retails for $39.99 (though it's currently under thirty bucks on Amazon), and the Mission: Impossible Extreme DVD Trilogy is priced at just $26.98 ($19.99 on Amazon right now).

From Music Box Films comes (at last) the Dragon Tattoo Trilogy: Extended Edition on both Blu-ray and DVD. While the first film in the Swedish trilogy based on Stieg Larsson's bestselling novels, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, is a murder mystery (and required viewing in the overall saga), the two subsequent entries (The Girl Who Played With Fire and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest) are both spy movies. To reveal exactly how is to give too much away, but they involve a ruthless Cold War defector and the Swedish security service the Säpo. Essentially, the plot progresses from Agatha Christie territory to Robert Ludlum's realm over the course of the three films. "Films," however, is a slightly misleading term. While the first one was always intended for theatrical release, the other two were made as a miniseries for Swedish TV, then cut down into features for international distribution. That means that the versions seen in American theaters (and previously available on DVD) were truncated. This release marks the first time that all three "films" have been available here in their entirety. Tying this release with the one discussed above, Swedish star Michael Nyqvist (whose role Daniel Craig takes on in the upcoming David Fincher version) plays a villain in Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol.

Finally, from Criterion we have the high-def debut of an Alfred Hitchcock spy classic with The Lady Vanishes Blu-ray Blu-ray. This disc contains all the same special features as the excellent DVD version from 2007 (discussed in my review here), as well as a new HD transfer of the film. A special bonus among those features is the inclusion of an entire second movie, 1941's Crooks' Tour, starring Basil Radford and Naunton Wayne reprising their Lady Vanishes roles as the oh-so-British, cricket-obsessed overgrown schoolboys Charters and Caldicott. Charters and Caldicott also turned up in Carol Reed's 1940 spy movie Night Train to Munich (from the same writers as The Lady Vanishes), which is also available on DVD from Criterion. (Review here.)

Movie Review: The Debt (2011)

Movie Review: The Debt (2011)

Note: The Debt contains twists and turns which I won’t spoil here, but might inadvertently hint at in the course of discussing the film.

John Madden’s The Debt has all sorts of classic spy elements in place, including a partial Cold War Berlin setting complete with Wall-crossing and escapes, dangerous undercover assignments, an apparently untrustworthy boss, young agents in love, gadgets, a gunfight and even a Mission: Impossible-style kidnapping plot. It’s also got a cast of excellent older actors (Helen Mirren, Tom Wilkinson, Ciarán Hinds, Jesper Christensen) and very good younger ones (Jessica Chastain, Sam Worthington, Marton Csokas), a talented director and a screenplay pedigree including the writers of the fantastic X-Men: First Class (review here) and the hopefully fantastic Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. It’s got all the makings of a top-shelf spy movie. But, unfortunately, the whole is somewhat less than the sum of its parts. In Madden’s hands, these elements mostly just sort of sit there on the screen. By breaking up the characters between two actors playing them at different ages, they all end up underdeveloped. And the script crumbles under its own cleverness, telegraphing its surprises with see-through gimmicks and a necessarily awkward structure. Perhaps most of all, The Debt is done in by one particularly perplexing bit of casting.

Chastain, Worthington and Csokas play a team of Mossad agents tasked, in 1966, with identifying a Nazi war criminal named Vogel (Christensen) believed to be living under an assumed name and practicing as a gynecologist in East Berlin. Mirren, Hinds and Wilkinson, respectively, play the same characters in 1997, still dealing with the repercussions of their mission three decades later. That’s kind of confusing, because Hinds looks like the spitting image of an older Csokas, and it’s easy to see Worthington growing into Wilkinson. Yet those obvious pairings are reversed. I was aware of who was supposed to be who, yet still couldn’t help fixating on the miscasting because it was so glaring. Others in the group I saw it with weren’t aware (because it’s not made very clear), and went through most of the movie assuming that Wilkinson was Worthington and vice versa. It’s an easy mistake, and seems to have tripped up other reviewers as well, including Roger Ebert. I just can’t fathom why they were cast as they were. Mirren, at least, is very obviously Chastain, because she is the only woman and none of those plot twists involve sex change operations.

In the Sixties storyline, Chastain is the rookie agent on her first mission, Worthington is the driven but untested idealist and Csokas is the cynical team leader. Christensen, who played the villainous Mr. White in Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace, gives a very impressive performance here as the monster hiding in plain sight. The movie’s most nail-biting scenes find Chastain submitting to his care, exposing herself (quite literally) to the enemy by sticking her feet in those stirrups so she can covertly snap his picture with a necklace camera in order to confirm that he is who she’s already pretty certain he is. These scenes are squirm-inducingly suspenseful.

The agents’ kidnapping of Vogel is very exciting, and Csokas’ plan incorporates several of Jim Phelps’ favorite ingredients for such a caper, including a drug that simulates the effects of a heart attack and a fake ambulance. (I’m certain that there was at least one episode—and probably more—of Mission: Impossible that actually featured the exact same scenario to extract someone from an Eastern Bloc city.) This leads to what should be an equally exciting attempt to whisk the captive across the Berlin Wall involving trains, cut fences and meticulous timing. Even in the individual sequences, the elements are all there, but something doesn’t quite click and they don’t generate the spine-tingling thrills I normally associate with Wall-crossings. 

The fact that the characters are spread out between two actors means that they’re not in the hands of any single performer long enough to adequately develop them. I didn’t get any sense of continuity from one age to the next, so these people really felt like totally different characters from each other. Mirren gets the most to work with in the modern setting, and therefore succeeds best at portraying character development, but none of her present-day actions satisfactorily explain Chastain’s muddled motivations for falling in love with either—let alone both—of her teammates in the Sixties.

The Debt is not a bad movie at all. It’s slick-looking and boasts moments of genuine suspense, like the aforementioned doctor’s appointments or scenes in which Christensen’s Hannibal Lecter-like Vogel taunts the agents, honing in on their individual insecurities. However it’s not an especially good movie either. While it succeeds in those moments, it fails to generate similar suspense or necessary emotions in other crucial scenes. It just kind of sits there. And when a movie with Cold War-era Wall-crossings, which are like catnip to this spy fan, just sits there, I can’t help but feel slightly disappointed. Perhaps my expectations were set too high based on the cast and writers. I’ll just have to hope that Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy delivers the intelligent, adult Cold War thrills I was hoping for from The Debt.

Clips From The Debt

Clips From The Debt

Spy fans are being really spoiled this fall. There are a ton of spy movies hitting North American theaters between now and December. Off the top of my head, we've got Colombiana, The Debt, The Killer Elite, Safe, Johnny English Reborn, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol. I'm sure I'm leaving a few out. Focus Features doesn't want The Debt to get lost in that shuffle, so they've released a few cool clips to remind us that this is an old-school spy movie to be excited about. If there's one thing (besides Elke Sommer) that I really love in a spy movie, it's Wall crossing. I just love scenes of agents using whatever means necessary to sneak into East Berlin or escape back into the West. And that's exacly what we get in this clip:



The Debt has a lot going for it even beyond Wall crossing. It's partially set in the Sixties (the greatest era of espionage, on film anyway), it's from the writers of X-Men: First Class (Jane Goldman and Matthew Vaughn) and Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (Peter Straughan) and it stars spy vererens Helen Mirren (RED), Jesper Christensen (Casino Royale, Quantum of Solace), Marton Csokas (The Bourne Supremacy), Ciarán Hinds (Munich, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy) and Tom Wilkinson (The Ghost Writer, Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol) – as well as Sam Worthington and Jessica Chastain. And it's only a few weeks away! The Debt opens on August 31. Here's the official synopsis:

In this espionage thriller, shocking news reaches retired Mossad secret agents Rachel (Mirren) and Stefan (Wilkinson) about their former colleague David (Hinds). Back in 1966, the trio (portrayed, respectively, by Chastain, Csokas, and Worthington tracked down Nazi war criminal Vogel (Christensen) in East Berlin. At great risk, and at considerable personal cost, the team’s mission was accomplished – or was it? The suspense builds in and across two different time periods, with startling action and surprising revelations.

See a bunch more clips and a making-of featurette at the official website.

Paul Haggis to Pen Gabriel Allon Spy Movie?

Way back in 2007 we heard that Universal had acquired Daniel Silva's series of spy novels about former Mossad agent (and Munich avenger) Gabriel Allon and tapped Pierre Morel, then known only for directing District B13 and shooting the first two Transporter movies, to helm. Obviously Morel went on to make a spy name for himself with Taken and From Paris With Love, but his take on Allon seems to have fallen apart. Then in April of this year Deadline reported new movement on the property at Universal, with former NBC topper Jeff Zucker on board to produce. Now The LA Times' 24 Frames blog (via MI6) reports that two-time James Bond screenwriter Paul Haggis (Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace) is in talks to write the first movie in the potential franchise, probably drawing from Silva's first Allon book, The Kill Artist. According to the newspaper's Steven Zeitchik, "it's possible Haggis would also direct it, but one of the sources said that the project is in early development and that any decision on a director would be much further off." As a director, Haggis is best known for the Oscar-winning Crash. Silva's most recent Allon book is The Rembrandt Affair; another, Portrait of a Spy, is due next month. (The titles reflect Allon's cover as an art restorer.) It's possible that Haggis will draw from multiple books in crafting the inaugural Allon film.

Poster For The Debt

Focus Features has released a new 1-sheet for The Debt, which opens August 19.  I'm really excited for this one.  It's got a great cast in what looks to be a solid, serious, old-school spy movie, from great writers to boot.  And it (partially) takes place in the Sixties! The trailer looked great, and who wouldn't want to see a young version of Helen Mirren take down Casino Royale's Mr. White?  Here's the official synopsis:

The espionage thriller begins in 1997, as shocking news reaches retired Mossad secret agents Rachel (Academy Award winner Helen Mirren, RED) and Stephan (two-time Academy Award nominee Tom Wilkinson) about their former colleague David (Ciarán Hinds, Munich, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy). All three have been venerated for decades by their country because of the mission that they undertook back in 1966, when the trio (portrayed, respectively, by Jessica Chastain [The Tree of Life], Marton Csokas [The Bourne Supremacy], and Sam Worthington [the guy who wasn't in The Tourist]) tracked down Nazi war criminal Vogel (Jesper Christensen of Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace) in East Berlin. At great risk, and at considerable personal cost, the team’s mission was accomplished – or was it? The suspense builds in and across two different time periods, with startling action and surprising revelations.

Tradecraft: Mirren Spy Movie The Debt Gets Distribution

Deadline reports that The Debt finally has a distributor.  I know I covered this movie here a long time ago, when it was first announced, but I can't find that post.  Suffice it to say, it was completed a while ago and has been a victim of Miramax's uncertain future, sitting on a shelf despite a very fine pedigree.  Now the Miramax situation has been resolved, and Focus Features and Universal Pictures International will release director John Madden's espionage thriller on August 31, 2011.  The story of The Debt, crafted by screenwriters Matthew Vaughn & Jane Goldman (X-Men: First Class) and Peter Straughan (Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy) and adapted from the 2007 Israeli film Ha-Hov, unfolds in two time periods: the Sixties and today.  (Have I ever mentioned how much I love spy movies set in the Sixties?)  Spy veterans Helen Mirren (RED), Tom Wilkinson (The Ghost Writer) and Ciarán Hinds (Munich) play a trio of retired Mossad agents in the present, while Jessica Chastain, Sam Worthington and Marton Csokas (The Bourne Supremacy) play the same characters in 1966, when they were active operatives tasked with capturing a Nazi war criminal (Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace's Jesper Christensen, who certainly looks the part!) in East Berlin.  "At great risk, and at considerable personal cost," according to the Focus press release, "the team’s mission was accomplished – or was it? The suspense builds in and across two different time periods, with startling action and surprising revelations."  The rather awesome trailer has been out for a while:

Movie Review: OSS 117: Lost In Rio (2009)

Director Michel Hazanavicius and co-writer Jean-François Halin have achieved the near-impossible and made a sequel that’s almost as good as the original. Gag-for-gag, shot-for-shot, OSS 117: Lost in Rio (as it’s called in America, anyway; I prefer the French title of OSS 117: Rio ne repond plus, which translates roughly as the more Eurospy-sounding Rio Doesn’t Answer) goes pretty much toe-to-toe with its predecessor. If the whole enterprise feels slightly less than the first film (OSS 117: Cairo Nest of Spies), that’s only because the concept (painstakingly recreating a Fifties or Sixties spy movie and playing up the era’s latent chauvinism, racism and homophobia for laughs) is no longer original. But the team has done a wonderful job of combating that problem by getting broader and bolder with certain aspects, such as the lead character’s casual racism (this time mostly channeled as antisemitism). And they’re lucky in that they have one tremendous crutch to lean on as well, which is lead actor Jean Dujardin. In his version of Hubert Bonisseur de la Bath (now a French secret agent as opposed to an American one, as in Jean Bruce’s novels and the original film series), Dujardin has created a lasting comic persona in league with Peter Sellers’ Inspector Clouseau and Leslie Nielson’s Frank Drebin, and far outshining lesser pretenders like Mike Meyers’ Austin Powers in the process. Dujardin has this role down pat, and he’s absolutely brilliant in it Not only does he uncannily look the part of a slick-haired Sixties secret agent (channeling the young Sean Connery at times), but he possesses all the requisite charm and charisma to make us still root for him despite the bumbling character’s many, many flaws! Its no mean feat (on the part of the writers and the actor) to create a hero so intolerant and yet still likable at the same time. He’s the Archie Bunker of the spy world.

As with 2006's OSS 117: Cairo Nest of Spies, OSS 117:Lost In Rio is a loving send-up of the Eurospy genre (and series whose name it bears), the spy genre at large, Sixties films in general and, of course, the James Bond series in specific. I think Hazanavicius himself put it best when he told the audience I saw this film with on Friday night that there are really two movies here: one that you see, which is a loving tribute to the movies of the Sixties, and another which you hear, which is a biting satire of them and the era that spawned them. That’s exactly why both of his OSS 117 films work so well–and hold so much appeal to fans of the Eurospy genre. This isn’t hateful parody, but loving parody. You’ll have as much fun spotting the countless specific visual references to various films of the time (On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, Murderer’s Row, Harper, The Thomas Crown Affair, North by Northwest, Fun in Acapulco, That Man in Rio and OSS 117: Mission for a Killer to name but a few) as you do laughing out loud at the sight gags (both clever and cheap–equally funny) and Hubert’s shocking and unrelenting conversational faux pas. (Some of his dialogue gets as awkward as an episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm.)

The degree of detail in recreating not only the era itself (in costumes and set decoration), but the style of filmmaking of the era is so impressive that it ends up creating references even where they weren’t intended. I could have sworn that Hazanavicius was attempting to deliberately evoke such Brazil-set Eurospy adventures as Kiss the Girls and Make Them Die and Dick Smart 2.007, yet he claims not to have seen those. But the close attention to period detail in his filmmaking techniques is so spot-on that when you combine that very specific lighting style, those wonderfully garish color schemes, the insertion of intentionally grainy stock footage shots (such as the jetliner landing in Rio, a subtle joke that cracks me up every time I see the film simply because the shots of jetliners in these movies–even the Bonds–are always stock shots of a noticeably inferior quality to the rest of the film!) and the expert use of rear projection for driving scenes (complete with all those unnecessary, jerky turns of the steering wheel actors seemingly couldn’t help but throw in, even though they rarely match the turns taken on the road behind them) combined with that favorite Eurospy setting all add up to–intentionally or not–recall any number of half-forgotten Sixties flicks. Hazanavicius has said that his goal was to create something that people might catch on TV with the volume down and think was an actual Sixties film, and in that he succeeds brilliantly. If you love that era of filmmaking, then chances are you’ll love OSS 117: Lost in Rio as well.

While OSS 117: Cairo Nest of Spies was its own animal (again full of references to other films–most prominently Hitchcock’s The Man Who Knew Too Much and early Bonds), the sequel actually adheres pretty closely to the template of one of Andre Hunebelle’s original OSS 117 films, OSS 117: Furia a Bahia (aka Mission For a Killer), starring Frederick Stafford. Like that film, the new one begins at a Swiss ski resort before the action shifts to Rio de Janeiro (where Hubert is spied on at the airport and then unwittingly gets in a car driven by an enemy) and eventually out of the city into the Amazon rain forest (again via crashing airplane) to a secret neo-Nazi headquarters. While it follows the same basic map, the new film is certainly not a remake. The Macguffin is totally new–a microfilm list of Nazi collaborators in the French government (no wonder it’s on microfilm, comments the idealistic Hubert; it must be a very small list!)–as are all the characters and incidents. Hazanavicius’ film throws in hippies, crocodiles, vengeful Chinese gangsters (frequent targets of Hubert’s racist comments), masked Mexican wrestlers, a sweaty CIA agent and a Nazi costume party. Hubert’s new leading lady is Dolores Koulechov (Louise Monot), a beautiful red-haired Mossad agent introduced wearing Ann-Margaret’s dress from Murderers’ Row. She respects the legend of OSS 117 and is honored to be working with him... until he opens his mouth. Everything he says is either sexist or antisemitic (the idea of Jews hunting Nazis amuses him to no end, but not so the stern-faced Mossad agents backing her up), which quickly puts a damper on any relationship he imagines developing between them.

The gags are broader than in the first film, and quickly result to nudity (when in doubt, show Hubert’s butt), but most of them hit their targets, nonetheless. A slow motion hospital chase in danger of dragging on too long is saved not by cheap glimpses of Dujardin’s derriere through his hospital gown (not once, but twice!), but by Ludovic Bource’s fantastic score, as bombastic and propulsive as if it were accompanying a high-speed car chase. Once again, there’s a deft mixture of smart satire and outright slapstick at play*, and the biggest laughs come from some of the riskier jokes from the former category: after hearing the head Nazi’s speech about his martial dreams for a Fifth Reich (because attempts at creating a Fourth Reich are so played out), the borderline facist Hubert dismisses the Nazis as “Utopists.” He instantly wins back any offended audience members by following up with his own speech, pleading with a roomful of uniformed Nazis to make this Fifth Reich “the Reich of Love.” Needless to say, he finds it a tough room.

Anchored by one of the great comedic performances of our age, OSS 117: Lost in Rio is another smart and funny satire of and homage to the spy movies of a bygone era. It celebrates the things from that time worthy of celebration, and eviscerates those worthy of evisceration. Fans of Eurospy cinema are often willing to overlook some of those movies’, ahem, outdated (to say the least) social views (or, more often, to find post-modern amusement in them), but those same fans are likely to find it refreshing to watch a film that calls them to task for those sexist and xenophobic points of view. From the broadest slapstick to the sharpest satirical barbs to the endless parade of film references (culminating in a hilarious jab at the final match-cut in North by Northwest), there’s something to enjoy for just about every spy fan and film buff in OSS 117: Lost in Rio.

OSS 117: Lost in Rio is currently playing exclusive one-week engagements in New York and Los Angeles; it expands into wider markets throughout the summer. For a full list of dates and cities, check the Music Box Films website.

*While the visual slapstick is obvious, though, some of the subtler verbal satire is unfortunately missed in the English language print thanks to white subtitles that sometimes don’t show up at all over lighter backgrounds.

Read my introduction to the character of OSS 117 here.
Read my review of OSS 117 se déchaîne here.
Read my review of Banco à Bangkok pour OSS 117 (aka Panic in Bangkok aka Shadow of Evil) here.
Read my review of Furia à Bahia pour OSS 117 (Fury in Brazil, aka OSS 117: Mission For a Killer) here.
Read my review of Atout coeur à Tokyo pour O.S.S. 117 (aka OSS 117: Terror in Tokyo) here.
Read my review of Pas de Roses pour OSS 117 (aka OSS 117: Murder For Sale) here.
Read my review OSS 117: Le Caire, nid d'espions (OSS 117: Cairo Nest of Spies) here.
Read my DVD review of OSS 117: Rio ne répond plus (OSS 117: Rio Doesn't Answer, aka OSS 117: Lost in Rio) here.

Tradecraft: Mossad And Assassin

Here are two stories that I missed in the trades, but luckily Dark Horizons caught them. 

Variety reports that producer Eric Eisner's L+E Pictures "has acquired feature rights to Shmu-el Segev's 'Alone in Damascus,' which recounts the story of Israeli spy Eli Cohen."  Israeli filmmaker Lior Geller will write the script.  So what, exactly, is Alone in Damascus?  The trade doesn't say.  Presumably it's a book, but perhaps a forthcoming one.  There is no book of that title currently available in America, at least.  The plot sounds interesting, though.  The trade reports that "Cohen worked as a Mossad agent from 1960 until his public execution in 1965 and built close ties with Syrian leaders, almost rising to the rank of Syrian defense minister. He's credited with supplying Israel with many details on Syrian political and military matters."

An Israeli spy rising through the ranks in Syria (albeit a less successful one) was also the subject of the fantastic documentary The Champagne Spy (full review here) in 2007.  That film criminally remains unreleased in America, though you can purchase an expensive German import DVD through Amazon.  At one time, it was reported that The Champagne Spy would also be developed into a fictionalized narrative feature for Hollywood.
And The Hollywood Reporter reports that True Memoirs of an International Assassin, an action-comedy spec script by Jeff Morris that was on the 2009 Black List, has been picked up by Mark Gill and Neil Sacker's West Hollywood-based independent production company The Film Department.  According to the trade, "Memoirs focuses on an accountant who writes a novel about the life he wishes he had, that of a fearless assassin. He sells the book, the publisher labels it a memoir, and the world comes to believe he is his alter ego. When he goes on vacation to Belize, he finds himself coerced into killing the country's prime minister and must now become the hero he's always written about but never dreamed he'd be."

Tradecraft: Sixties Spies Return!

Shakespeare In Love director John Madden is in negotiations to direct a script co-written by Layer Cake's Matthew Vaughn about a female secret agents in the Sixties. All I really need to know is "female secret agent in the Sixties" and I'm there, but there are a few more details. The Debt will be a remake of a 2007 Israeli film called HaHov, which The Hollywood Reporter says "follows a trio of 1960s Israeli intelligence agents who pursue a Nazi war criminal only to have him escape. More than 30 years later, their target re-emerges, forcing one of the agents to track him down and preserve their decades-old cover-up. As with the original, the remake is expected to feature two actresses playing the female protagonist in the '60s and '90s." Jane Goldman co-wrote the adaptation with Vaughn, and Miramax will release.

Movie Review: You Don’t Mess With the Zohan

Movie Review: You Don’t Mess With the Zohan

This will be a short review because You Don’t Mess With the Zohan barely even merits coverage on a spy blog. In fact, it’s a little questionable whether it’s even a spy movie at all. Despite being initially pitched as a comedy about a top Mossad agent who fakes his death to become a New York City hairdresser (a premise reiterated by co-writer Judd Apatow as recently as a week before its opening), I noticed nary a mention of the Mossad. Zohan seems to be more of a counter-terrorist soldier, but he still fits the general indestructibility of a Bondian super-spy, and does get to do a little undercover work. The opening chase in Israel, in which Adam Sandler’s surprisingly buff Zohan takes on John Turturro’s surprisingly amiable Palestinian terrorist the Phantom, generates some good, over-the-top sight gags as it parodies similar chases in Bourne and Bond movies. The sequence quickly establishes the very, very silly tone that will carry the entire film.

Once Sandler’s character reaches New York, there’s little mention of his former spy life for the entire middle of the movie, although he occasionally relies on his matchless fighting skills to take on the likes of obnoxious drivers or neighborhood ruffians. Mainly, though, the focus of the second act is on his hairdressing career (based exclusively on 1980s Paul Mitchell styles) and his gigolo career, wherein he has sex with a succession of old ladies. Indeed, both of Sandler’s usual fetishes, grannies and enormous penises, are driven into the ground without ever becoming remotely funny or even really being made into jokes. They’re just there, each in high quantities and often together.

The third act sees the Phantom coming to New York for a rematch with Zohan, whose identity has been exposed. Instead of bringing together the first two acts cohesively, though, it ends up going a completely different direction (as the two of them team up to fight an evil real estate mogul played by a wrestling announcer) so that all three acts feel completely disparate. Act 3 concerns itself with solving the Israeli/Palestinian conflict once and for all, and showing both sides that the real enemy is hillbillies. I think. There is no reprisal of the opening spy spoofery.

Basically, You Don’t Mess With the Zohan is an Adam Sandler movie, which is a genre unto itself comprising all of the actor’s self-produced, post Happy Gilmore/Billy Madison career. And, like most Sandler movies, it does have its funny moments amidst the flat old lady gags. If you like that stuff, you’ll like this. If not, stay away... and feel no need to see it as a spy movie!

For a harsher, but valid, viewpoint, check out this blog.

Movie Review: The Champagne Spy

Nadav Schirman’s excellent documentary The Champagne Spy tells the story of Israeli spy Ze'ev Gur Arie, aka Wolfgang "Wolf" Lotz. Lotz posed as a German ex-Nazi living the playboy lifestyle in ‘60s Cairo while his wife and young son waited patiently in Paris. (Owing to the great difficulty in running spies directly from Israel to Egypt, Paris served as the European headquarters of the Mossad at the time.) It’s not so much the story of his actual spying, but the story of his descent into his double identity, and the havoc that wreaked on him and anyone close to him.

The central interviewee in the documentary is Oded, Lotz’s son. Young Oded took Super-8 home movies of his father’s visits (Lotz would return to Paris every five or six months to report to his handlers and see his family) and allowed the filmmakers full access to this footage. As an adult, Oded revisits some of the sites of his childhood, and you can see the memories flooding into his eyes–the ones he shares, and the ones he doesn’t.

Schirman also had unprecedented access to former Mossad agents, Lotz’s colleagues and handlers. Despite one handler’s assertion that it was always best for an agent to keep his family in the dark about the true nature of his frequent business abroad, Lotz ignored that advice and told his young son exactly what he did on one return visit. "You can’t tell anyone," he cautioned him. "My life depends on it." And so Oded was burdened with the huge secret–and responsibility–he would carry throughout his youth. Still, at that point it felt good for him being let in; it made him feel closer to his father. When they went to see From Russia With Love together on one visit home, his dad told him the real life stuff was much more interesting.

In Cairo, Lotz lived as a German horse breeder in a community of German scientists who were helping Egypt develop weapons of mass destruction to use against Israel. He enjoyed the high life–the gambling, the clubs, the women. His handlers worried that he was enjoying it too much, but he was far too ensconced in the community to remove such a valuable asset. Eventually, against his handlers’ wishes, Lotz went so far as to marry a young German woman, Waldrud, in his cover identity. The Mossad did not tell his actual wife.

When Lotz and his new wife were arrested as spies, it was reported in world newspapers. Oded saw the headline first, and it fell on him to break the news to his mother that her husband had another wife. She refused to believe that Waldrud was anything more than a fellow agent the Mossad had assigned that cover to. She and Oded kept vigil for years, praying that Lotz would one day be released, but unable to speak of him to their friends. The only reason he avoided the death sentence in Egypt was because his cover was so good. They believed that he was actually German, not Israeli. If Oded spoke to anyone about his father and revealed the truth, he risked dooming him.

When Lotz was finally released, his Israeli family was relieved, but forced to face the truth; he had slipped further than they could imagine into his fictional identity, and he loved another woman, another wife. Schirman’s film only becomes more fascinating once Lotz is released. Obviously useless as an agent after being so publicly exposed, he had a difficult time adjusting back to his real life. He was used to the high life and tried to continue to live it, but with the Mossad no longer picking up the tab for such lavish expenses, he went heavily into debt, and actually ended up working in a department store at one point.

It’s an angle I’ve never seen a spy film take before. What happens to an agent accustomed to the James Bond lifestyle when they can no longer afford it? (Well, to those few agents ever lucky enough to live it at all, I suppose!) What happens to a man who is more used to a blown undercover identity than to his own? What does that do to his relationships with superiors, friends, wives and son? The Champagne Spy is a fascinating examination of such a man told by those who knew him best–or perhaps not at all. It’s the story of a son coming to grips decades later with his complex feelings about his father, a man he revered as a hero, but couldn’t forgive for what he did to his family. For anyone with interest in real life espionage and the toll it takes on its practitioners, this documentary is worth seeking out. It’s playing the festival circuit right now, but it’s such a good movie that it’s bound to get a release deal of some sort, possibly limited theatrical, definitely on DVD.

And for those who prefer narrative features to documentaries, Schirman has already signed a deal to turn The Champagne Spy into a fictionalized English language feature. During a Q&A at the Los Angeles Film Festival this past weekend, he told the crowd that the feature version would have a different hook. Instead of taking the son’s point of view, it will be told from the point of view of the young German wife, Waldrud. She meets a charming stranger on a train, and he whisks her away into the seductive scene of the Cairo jet-set. Then she slowly learns his true identity, and gets caught up in a world she never imagined... Sounds like the makings of another good movie!

Schirman had other interesting things to share as well. The making of the movie, if he’s to be believed, is almost as incredible as the story it tells. The director found a book Lotz had written, also called The Champagne Spy, in a used bookstore and couldn’t believe the tale it told. The book had been out of print since the early seventies, but he tried to track down the film rights by contacting publishers on three continents. In all cases, the rights had reverted to the author. Tracking down the author himself proved even more difficult. Some people told him Lotz was running guns in Australia; others said he was training mercenaries in South Africa. When Schirman discovered Lotz was actually dead, he was about to give up but for a chance meeting at the swimming pool.

Schirman was sitting poolside while his son took swimming lessons when a stranger sat down beside him. The stranger asked him what he was working on, and he told him. The man was interested. A few days later, Schirman received an anonymous phone call telling him how to get in touch with Lotz’s son and executor of his estate. By pure coincidence, the stranger at the pool had been a former Mossad agent himself! That man was later instrumental in lining up interviews with other intelligence officers. Apparently the Mossad, an organization more secretive than the CIA, gave Schirman fuller cooperation than they’ve ever given any filmmaker before. When a viewer asked Schirman how he managed to track down so many spooks, he answered, "Networking." Apparently Hollywood isn’t so different from the shadowy world it so often portrays!