At that era, there were a lot of big production movies with a lot of international stars. It was something to challenge the mighty power of television back then, and the strange mood of films that punched the genres' formulas in the face!
Maybe someday I'll give you a list of this kind of movies as it ended up mostly being flops, real proud turkeys, and other huge titanics.
Here, it fulfilled all the previous conditions, despite that the ambition was just well meaning. Actually after the astonishing (Z - 1969), the term "political thriller" became encouraging. 4 years later, (Night Flight from Moscow), aka (The Serpent), tried to make something balanced between the serious satire (the cold war is never over, despite any detente), and the commercial spy thriller, to achieve eventually mediocre movie both ways. It could've been a great espionage movie where all the parties enjoyed deceiving each other, but the final result was that tasteless and a little bit embarrassing, putting in mind the big names.
It's frigid, and that's strange when you look into the history of its director (Henri Verneuil), it's silly like a noir movie where all the killings and all the killers are complicatedly successive, and it's idiot when you examine the evidences that finally exposed the Russians' real trick. You have to think whether the whole Russian intelligence is so dumb, or the real dumb ones are who want to convince you with some things as low as this!
It's, though, a fest of stars, one paranoiac movie, and an early time to launch a twist that surprising. In terms of that twist alone, I think, despite some weakness, that it was highly unpredictable, considering the year of production, as since the 2000s, this became ordinary fashion in movies.
It deserves a view; not as espionage movie with big stars, but as the disappointment of that.
Maybe someday I'll give you a list of this kind of movies as it ended up mostly being flops, real proud turkeys, and other huge titanics.
Here, it fulfilled all the previous conditions, despite that the ambition was just well meaning. Actually after the astonishing (Z - 1969), the term "political thriller" became encouraging. 4 years later, (Night Flight from Moscow), aka (The Serpent), tried to make something balanced between the serious satire (the cold war is never over, despite any detente), and the commercial spy thriller, to achieve eventually mediocre movie both ways. It could've been a great espionage movie where all the parties enjoyed deceiving each other, but the final result was that tasteless and a little bit embarrassing, putting in mind the big names.
It's frigid, and that's strange when you look into the history of its director (Henri Verneuil), it's silly like a noir movie where all the killings and all the killers are complicatedly successive, and it's idiot when you examine the evidences that finally exposed the Russians' real trick. You have to think whether the whole Russian intelligence is so dumb, or the real dumb ones are who want to convince you with some things as low as this!
It's, though, a fest of stars, one paranoiac movie, and an early time to launch a twist that surprising. In terms of that twist alone, I think, despite some weakness, that it was highly unpredictable, considering the year of production, as since the 2000s, this became ordinary fashion in movies.
It deserves a view; not as espionage movie with big stars, but as the disappointment of that.