Notorious (1946) – A romantic spy story.
Dir: Alfred Hitchcock Writer: Ben Hecht Cast: Cary Grant. Ingrid Bergman. Claude Rains. Alfred Hitchcock was often referred to as the Master of Suspense. He was a supreme Auteur, the man whose personal stamp on the human condition was visible in every frame, scene and dialogue in his works. Every frame in his films…
Read MoreDev Anand – Forever an Icon
Today Dev Anand’s centenary celebrations have been kicked off across India. Fans across India, including me, are going wild. The festivities include screening four restored films: CID, Jewel Thief, Guide, and Johny Mera Naam. These four films span 20 years of cinematic life, creating generations of fans. Always considered a style icon, it is perhaps…
Read MoreThe Battle of Britain – 1969 – Accurate and entertaining
Director: Guy Hamilton Producer: Harry Saltzman Script: James Kennaway. Wilfred Greatorex A common legend among the British is the trope of a “small bunch of British men against the might of the ugly bad …….. ” . In the blanks, you can insert Africans (Zulu and Khartoum), Pathans and Indians (Gunga Din, The Bengal Lancers),…
Read MoreSeventeen Moments of Spring (1973) – Excellent
Story : Yulian (Julian) Semyonov Direction : Tatyana Lioznova Cast : Vyacheslav Tikhonov, Most of us are used to spy stories where Western Heroes set out to slay the evil Soviet Empire and save the Western Way of life. The Spy fiction genre has its rules in that the Western characters are usually the…
Read MoreAll the Old Knives (1994) – Slow Burn but Riveting
Dir: Janus Metz Cast: Chris Pine. Thandiwe Newton. Jonathan Pryce. Laurence Fishburne Story and Script: Olen Steinhauer It is said that the end of the Cold War also ended spy fiction as a genre, be it in print or on film. The post-1991 “unipolar” world soon proved to be a fallacy. As…
Read MoreHeart of Stone (2023) – That sinking feeling
Consider this. A secret agent is on a mission and saves the world. He returns to his home town and agency and is given a new mission. And then he discovers that he has to save the world all over again as he did not do a proper job of it in the first…
Read MoreThe Night Manager – two equally good versions
The end of the Cold War in 1991 and the dissolution of the Soviet Union supposedly gave a “peace dividend”. The enormous budgets of the Armed Forces on both sides of the US-USSR divide could now be used for “peaceful purposes”. Or so they thought. John le Carre’s The Night Manager was published…
Read MoreSmiley’s People (1982) – Riveting
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (1974) was the first book of The Karla Trilogy. John le Carre’s follow-up to this story was The Honourable Schoolboy (1977), which involved extensive travel to Southeast Asia, including Hong Kong, Thailand and Cambodia, where he witnessed and made notes about the final assault of the Khmer Rouge on…
Read MoreTinker Tailor Soldier Spy – Great TV Series, Average film
David Cornwell, who went by the pseudonym John le Carre, wrote incredibly detailed books about spies, spying, morality, The Cold War and everything else. Many of his “Classic spy fiction” stories have been filmed or made into TV Serials. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy was published in 1974 to universal critical and widespread acclaim. Le…
Read MoreOppenheimer (2023) – Brilliant !
Writer, Producer, Director : Christopher Nolan Cast: Cillian Murphy. Matt Damon. Emily Blunt. Robert Downey Jr. Josh Hartnett. Florence Pugh. Let me say that I went to the theatre purely by the hype surrounding the movie. I was also hesitant in that this is a Christopher Nolan movie where you spend most of…
Read MoreThe Angel – The UNBELIEVABLE Spy
Ever since its birth, on May 14, 1948, Israel has led a precarious existence and has never known peace with its neighbours. Nowhere was this desperation more apparent than in the 1973 October war, known as the Yom Kippur War, when Israel was attacked simultaneously by Egypt from the South and Syria from the North.…
Read MoreEli Cohen – The (Impossible) Spy – two films
Mossad is the Israeli Civilian Intelligence Agency , collecting information on Israel’s foreign enemies. (Aman, is a purely military intelligence agency responsible to the Defence Ministry). Over the years, Mossad has executed daring operations worldwide and not necessarily in the immediate neighbouring countries that have sworn to destroy Israel and continue to threaten Israel’s existence.…
Read MoreKleo (2022) – ROCKING GOOD!
It’s 1987, and the Cold War is in full swing. Kleo Straub, an unofficial “wet work” specialist – meaning assassin – is infiltrated through The Wall into West Berlin to assassinate a target. She reaches the nightclub and entices the target, but not before an off-duty West Berlin cop Sven Petzold (Dimitri Schaad), tries…
Read MoreWAR SAILOR (KRIGSEILEREN) (2022) – TV Series (3 Parts) – Absorbing
In his six-volume autobiography, Winston Churchill said that the one thing that caused him maximum anxiety THROUGHOUT THE WAR was The Battle of the Atlantic. This was the battle by merchant ships, escorted by the British (and, after 1942, American) Navy, to bring supplies to Britain, to continue the war. These supplies came from…
Read MoreFUBAR (2023) – TV Series (8 Parts) – For Fans Only
Cast : Arnold Schwarzenegger. Monica Barbaro. Milan Carter. Gabriel Luna A secret agent is in a foreign country doing some caper. His guide keeps talking to him through a tiny two-way radio. The hijinks continue, and the secret agent just about escapes with his life after a spectacular ‘action’ scene where the bad…
Read MoreWansee Conference – Two Movies – CHILLING
Almost everyone knows what happened in The Holocaust – the systematic extermination of Undesirables and “Untermenschen”. These included anyone who opposed the Nazi philosophy and ideology, targeted groups like Jews, Gypsies, Communists, Homosexuals, Mentally unwell people, and opponents of the regime – in short, anyone and everyone the Nazis thought didn’t fit or opposed…
Read MoreSobibor Escape – two films
One of the Third Reich’s most significant and darkest achievements was the efficient transport of “Untermenschen” to the gas chambers. Even with the tide turning in 1943 and the Russians pushing the Germans back to the Polish frontiers from where they started in June 1941, the gas chambers in Eastern Poland and Russia were busy.…
Read MorePOINT OF NO RETURN – 1993 aka The Assassin – Lost in translation?
Director: John Badham Cast: Bridget Fonda. Gabriel Byrne. Dermot Mulroney. Anne Bancroft. Conspiracy theorists will love this film. The premise is simple. A secret Government department trains young people convicted of severe crimes into an assassin squad. In this case, a female drug addict Maggie (Bridget Fonda) who has been involved in a…
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