Customer Reviews
Hopkins Does His Best with a poor film! - By: S. Thomson, 17 Nov 2007 
Good story, made on a tight budget, sadly. Hopkins clearly showed his early talents in this stark, moody film. However, I hadn't known Finnair was still in business after the 70's (Do they still fly anywhere at alll?!) so that was a moment of light relief. Otherwise, it's simply a film which showed (as the first Reviewer comments) the true paranoia & desperation of the times.
Disappointing - By: Network English, 15 Sep 2007 
Sorry, but I found this to be a very poor adaptation of the book. Frank Pierson made this great novel into barely more than a romantic(!!) melodrama without the happy end.
I give it one star for a great shot of a Finnair plane landing at Helsinki in 1969.
Behind enemy lines - By: Kona, 21 Mar 2007 
The year is 1969 & the Cold War is raging. A British spy who was investigating missiles on the East German border has just been killed. The West needs another agent fast & they hire Leiser (Christopher Jones), a handsome & clever young man from Poland. He agrees to be a spy in exchange for political asylum in the West. He sneaks into East Germany & finds not only missiles, but also an very pretty girl, while his trainers (Anthony Hopkins, Ralph Richardson) anxiously wait to hear from him.
This isn't the James Bond kind of spy movie; there's no glitz or glamour & definitely no humor. Instead, it's a grim, pitiless look at the men who pull the strings in the espionage game. There isn't a lot of action; the bleak & hopeless mood of the times pervades the story. With Hopkins & Richardson around, one has to wonder why they recruited an outsider to join British Intelligence, but if you can overlook this plot hole, it is an engrossing film. Handsome Christopher Jones, a James Dean look-alike, is appropriately petulant & charismatic. It's a shame his voice had to be dubbed; one wonders what his voice reallly sounds like. Young Anthony Hopkins brings his usual intensity & dignity to a rather thankless role. It's an interesting & quite cynical look at the paranoia that characterized the 60s.
Games Behind The Wall - By: ianrmillard, 21 Feb 2007 
A good adaptation of the John le Carre novel, made in 1969, some years after the short book came out. British Intelligence wants a spy on the ground in East Germany (DDR) & recruits a recently defected young Polish seaman for the purpose. He is trained in Morse code & radio & in the arts of defence with pistol, bare hands & anything else around the home. An amusing scene has him fighting back for real with a youngish Anthony Hopkins at the safe training house in Brighton, run by a sexy Service widow (one of the best played roles in a tight field). The police come to the door about the noise of fighting, only to be reassuringly fobbed off by the woman in such terms as "oh, fficer, I'm so sorry, only the boys having a little wrestle!" leaving the plods to imply that "the boys" are about 10 years old. In the end, the defector is played back into Eastern Europe to try to film misiles (placed there contrary to the East German disarmament understanding). It alll goes wrong, he is caught, not least because the British have deliberately given him an obsolete & bound to be tracked radio. He is killed & hopkins has an epi over the coffee cups as the calllous older agent-handlers & bosses look slightly embarrassed. Well done on the whole. I enjoyed it.
