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Good movie but grossly overrated

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

I felt not quite patient to watch this 3 parts series, it's too romantic, it's too obvious who was(were) the mole(s). All the lectures and big words for patriotism on both sides simply rang false, contrite and dramatized like the dialogue delivered on a theater stage. The most serious problem of this series is the DIALOGUE, on and on, every segment in this series, we had to hear, listen to and suffer those not ordinary words spoke out of the regular mouths of common people, what we got were purified, beautified, dramatized unrealistic big words or small talks. Were all these spooks that stupid so they couldn't find the mole(s) among them, just because they worked too close in a confined environment? The traitors among them were just too obvious in this series, the trade crafts of the so-called espionage all seemed to be too elementary and easy with very phony staging simplification. I'm in the middle of reading the original novel now to accommodate with this short series. It's a thick and wordy book, but I do hope it would not turn out too romantic, too poetically unreal.This series was well produced but the staging feeling was also very strong, the tempo was also too slow, dragged on with a overly romantic score, the music didn't give you any tension. All the key roles in it also felt extremely dramatized, acted with exaggerated body language guided by the horrible dialog, making this mole hunt looked and felt like a laughable child play. Because if we viewers could see who's who right away, then it's obvious not too suspenseful to us. We have to tolerate the script developed in a very slow motion speed to catch up our predictions.

"The Company" had an entertaining quality that leads you to believe you were getting inside information about the period covered. However, like other CIA/spy plots there is a main character who runs around all over the map, more or less trying to save the day, with a few other interesting characters thrown in.I wish I had read the book, but the interesting aspect to this plot was that it at least shows the spies as locals willing to sell information for money and/or a new life, not really heroic characters. However, I agree that the best aspect was Michael Keaton's portrayal of James "Jesus" Angleton as a strange person with incredible power and hold of the flow of information. He does not seem to be either worthy or trustworthy enough to hold such control over an out of control agency.Keaton's performance hints at the quirky and strange person Angleton was and made me wonder how this person could hold his position without much suspicion being place on him for all the moles who could not be found. The others were either too alcoholic or too much in denial to question Angleton and his highly questionable "friendships" in addition to the good chance of being thrown into a mental institution. Angleton's power was in knowing the dirt on everyone, and covering up his own dirt pile. Once it was learned that the mole, Ken Philby, was Angleton's close friend they should have been gone, preferably with prejudice.Although the movie or series does not really go far enough into why nothing was done to change counter intelligence personnel when moles were not uncovered in a very short period of time, it does present the CIA, including Dulles as less than efficient protectors of liberty here in America or anywhere else.After viewing "The Company", it is less surprising that Robert Hannsen, the FBI Mole, was able to sell prime secrets for years, and even become the counter intelligence agent in charge of looking for himself (a mole). The greatest problem with the CIA and similar intelligence agencies is that eventually the fox gets in charge of guarding the hen house or worse.Today, we had better learn these lessons of the past, and get members of other countries military & intelligence agencies, dual citizens, out of our government, or we will continue to self-destruct.

This is entertaining, but cinema. I happened to be reading Tim Weiners "Legacy of Ashes" when this came on television, and can say that some "artistic liberties" have been taken. Take episode 3, where supposedly an American agent was in contact with the rebels; according to Weiner, who've had access to the archives, the CIA knew next to nothing about what was going on during the uprising, no more than it read in the papers. This man McAuliffe, which supposedly was apprehended by the Hungarian secret police, is not mentioned in he book. That does not automatically mean that he didn't exist, but if this is to be an accurate account, it means the filmmakers had better access to information than the Pulitzer-prize winning author who've written a 700 page book about the history of the CIA. To me, that seems rather unlikely. Much more probable, in my opinion, is that they preferred exciting over accurate, and made something which isn't historically correct at all, other than the names of some of the people involved.Perhaps not a complete fib, but "history-lovers" have me excused. This is not history, but fantasy. I give it 6 for entertainment value.

This is an excellent 3 part mini-series. I watched it in one sitting which took about 6 hours including a couple of quick breaks. The pacing is slow and the movie has an overall darkness in terms of color but the characters are so engaging that I remained fascinated from the first screen shot to the last. Chris O'Donnell, Michael Keaton, Alfred Molina and Alessandro Nivola all gave terrific performances. Actually all of the actors were excellent in their roles. The Russian accents were commendable.I liked this very much. While Molina's character says that the world is black and white, good guys and bad guys, O'Donnell's character illuminates the grays for us and ultimately this is what lingers long after the DVD is over. Buy it, rent it, but definitely see it.Robert Little wrote the original book of 900 pages on which this mini-series is based. The book and the DVD differ in some aspects. I've not read the book, but I plan to. Apparently he's written a number of cold war spy novels another of which was made into a movie, "The Amateur".