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Awesome Movie

As Good As It Gets

Admirable film.

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.

because part of me wants desperately to think of John Huston's The Kremlin Letter as something like brilliant.The other part of me suffered through a long, overly-complicated, and tedious chunk of Le Carre-ish dullness that made two hours seem like twenty.I'd like to put the argument to rest.What I did take away from TKL is that spying is beyond nasty, it's downright loathsome. Just imagine hooded American agents forcing a Russian intelligence officer to watch films of his 18 year old daughter being made love to by an older black woman.No insult here to 18 year olds, black women, or lesbians, but to seduce a young woman in order to blackmail her Soviet father--who probably thinks of black people in general as a couple rungs down the evolutionary ladder and lesbians as degenerates--is pretty darned ruthless. Throw in Max Von Sydow and Orson Welles treating enemies of the state as so much clay to be manipulated, then destroyed, Richard Boone as a heartless killer with a warm-hearted chuckle, Barbara Parkins and Bibi Andersson as hopelessly damaged women in the crossfire, and about another dozen pimps and whores and elegant homosexuals and hashish-smokers and you'll long for the happier days of the couple handcuffed together in The 39 Steps.There's a startling viciousness to The Kremlin Letter, and it isn't in the form of occasionally seeing a character beaten, sometimes to death, with the sides of hands. It's how sociopathic people become when they commit espionage. I left the movie feeling vaguely nauseated. The aforementioned blackmail, the tying off of a loose end with one character tearing open the clothing of a women, not to rape her but to terrorize her before he smashes her kidneys and crushes her windpipe, the look on Patrick O'Neal's face as he reads a note from a Soviet agent at the end of the movie--kill the seduced 18 year old, her mother, and so on and so forth, or I'll kill somebody you care about. It's no wonder spies get shot.

Director John Huston also co-penned this complicated adaptation of Noel Behn's acclaimed spy novel set in 1969, with a team of crack operatives skilled in counter-intelligence matters and burglary sent to Moscow to retrieve an unauthorized anti-Red Chinese letter promising US aid to Russia via the destruction of China's atomic weapons. Star-studded tale of espionage and double-crosses rarely livens up, is often crass and offensive, yet it does have a certain arrogant style which maintains interest. The early assemblage of talents for the mission is fun (though there's the usual hubbub about accepting a girl into the circle), and Patrick O'Neal is commendably non-showy in the central role of the Naval officer who is unceremoniously dropped from the military to take part in the operation. Huston's decision not to use subtitles is most interestingly handled, and the Finnish locations are convincing (if drab). Still, the brutality in the film's final third is disheartening, and the twist climax underwhelming. ** from ****

An absolutely diabolical cold war spy thriller. Directed by John Huston, with a mostly all-star cast, it's offbeat, grim, brutal, sexually frank (if far from PC these days)-- and rather bloody for its time.Patrick O'Neal seems at first glance a bit older than the Rone character should be, but a line of dialog indicates service in Korea. So perhaps this correct, and the passions he seems to elicit from the younger female characters are part of the book. Speaking of which, it's based on the novel by Noel Behn, who had served in the real-world Army Counter-Intelligence Corps. The print I saw on TCM was extremely crisp and clear, I didn't notice any graininess. The sound seemed fine, although the over-dubbed Russian to English bit did seem like a misstep at first.

Agents are sent from the west to retrieve "The Kremlin Letter" in this 1970 film directed by John Huston and starring Patrick O'Neal, Richard Boone, George Sanders, Orson Welles, Max von Sydow, Barbara Parkins, Dean Jagger, and Bibi Andersson. O'Neal plays Rone, who is removed from military service and put on the mission because of his photographic memory. Each man and Parkins, who is a safecracker sent in place of her arthritic father, is assigned a group to infiltrate, all with the objective of finding this anti-Chinese letter. Or is that what the assignment is really about? This is an extremely cold and vicious look at the spy game - it's no fun caper film. It's absorbing, moves quickly and is filled with marvelous, if not altogether likable characters. The last moment in the film will leave you breathless.With a cast like this, the acting should be uniformly excellent, and it is, with the not-so-talented but beautiful Parkins given a role where she doesn't have to do any scenery chewing. George Sanders is especially memorable as the spy assigned to the gay contingent. O'Neal underplays, which is ideal for his character. Many people on this board won't remember that Richard Boone was a prominent western TV star who had aspirations of being taken seriously as an actor. In fact, he even started some sort of repetory company, as I recall. He was very talented, and here plays the head man to perfection, blond hair, down-home accent and all.Very intriguing, done at a time when spy films were a dime a dozen. "The Kremlin Letter" stands out for its detachment and lack of sentiment.