Watch The Russia House For Free

Memorable, crazy movie

Best movie ever!

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

Sean Connery is a publisher and saxophone player swept up in Cold War antics as an agent trying to smuggle scientific secrets of some sort out of Russia and into the West.I never liked the soprano saxophone. I don't know why it exists. It's usually too shrill and is associated with supermarkets, cheap commercials, and Kenny G. Why isn't the clarinet good enough, hey? This is one sluggish movie and a bit complicated, as the author's plots tend to be. It's redeemed by the shenanigans of the CIA/MI5 or MI6, a group of puppeteers behind Connery and his contact, Michelle Pfeiffer, led by a hot-headed Roy Scheider and a dry, ironic James Fox. J. T. Walsh -- my co-star in the superlative "Windmills of the Gods", or what it "Rage of Angels?", I forget -- is the ironbound US Army officer who suspects everyone of being a ComSymp and wants to bomb them all -- "a hard-head from the ***hole up," as someone describes him.They put Connery through a lie detector test to make sure he's not a commie, and the scene puts on display the movie's most charming feature -- its witty screenplay.The wily interrogators ask Connery about his politics, his motives, his past. "Have you ever associated with any musicians with known anarchist tendencies?" Connery frowns thoughtfully. "Well, there was one trombone player. Willie Brown was his name. He was the only musician I've ever known who was completely devoid of any anarchist tendencies." The performances are uniformly good, even Roy Scheider who seems about to stroke out at any moment and who shouts scatological imprecations. I think the role calls for it. I can't understand why all the men are so awfully sun tanned though. The weather in Moscow and St. Petersberg are about what we can expect -- more clouds of gray than any Russian play could guarantee.The photography of Russian cities and their monuments is memorable.

John Le Carre stories are subtle, tissuey things. Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy requires re-reading the book, and rewinding in mid-film, to catch key plot developments. The Russia House is, in this vein, a classic Le Carre yarn, co- adapted to the screen by Le Carre and the talented Tom Stoppard. The film is produced and directed by Australian filmmaker Fred Schipisi, notable for the excellent and psychodynamic Six Degrees of Separation and the fulsomely enjoyable Roxanne. Schipisi's direction and production values are this film's weakest points, the framed shots from the start look amateurishly ungainly, ill-framed, and ill-cut. The director's only saving perhaps was the decision to allow jazz man Branford Marsalis to score the film, with mostly lilting haunts of soprano sax melodies. The story centers on a Brit, played by Sean Connery, and a Russian, played by Michele Pfeiffer. It is 1990, and glasnost has been declared. Connery's leading man, "Barley" Blair, is a Russophilic book editor fond of extended stays in grey Moscow. Pfeiffer's co-lead, Katya, is a Russian of almost anonymous identity beyond the familiar tropes. Katya has a friend who programs Russia's nukes, the friend wants Russia's secrets out, and Katya is recruited to vouchsafe them as written down to Barley, this westerner with a kind soul and an avowed commitment to humanism. Let's start with the biggest and best part of the film, Connery. His Barley is a glorious, ruined shambles. A gentle, aging hedonist, who looks, stealing a line from the film "like an unmade bed with a shopping bag attached." Connery is entertaining and engaging in every frame, truly inhabiting Barley as an original character.Pfeiffer is very good, if not at her best as the Russian woman beholden by secrets and restrained by crippling caution. Her Russian-tinted accent is querulous in the first minutes of the film, but by the midpoint she achieves--and she may do it with her cheekbones as much as her diction, it all counts--believability as a Russian person. The other great strength The Russia House has, which has sustained the film as watchable and re-watchable over time, is the large supporting cast of male actors portraying the MI6 and CIA spooks who Barley haphazardly encounters, and very quickly takes direction from. James Fox, Roy Scheider, John Mahoney, Michael Kitchen and an almost SNL-flamboyant Ian McNeice (as the riotously out-of-place Merrydew) provide a fantastical espionage-ical Greek chorus that set off Connery's ethical and emotional contretemps.The film's final potent ingredient is a solo supporting performance by Klaus Maria Brandauer as "(code name) Dante," a mysterious Russian who seems to be behind the searching questions the men in grey directing Barley seem to have. The Russia House is neither the best wrought Le Carre story on film, nor the best "Russia film" depicting the second cold war era of the 1980s. It would take a quick undercard to The Hunt for Red October. It would lose in a close decision to Gorky Park. But Connery as Barley above all is worth the ticket, which leaves the film in the category of "worthy," even with the producer/director's foibles set against it.

Without any hesitation, I admit: this is one of my favorite movies! To be more precise, it's one of the top 5 movies I have ever seen, and a rare one I watched several times in the course of the two decades (in cinema, on video or TV). I noticed an interesting development of my attitude towards this movie: my first watching hasn't resulted in a special satisfaction (as far as I remember), but every subsequent time the movie engaged me more and more. Obviously, this masterpiece of non-standard political thriller should be seen more then once! What is so good about it? I would say – everything! First, the theme: a subtle story of personal relationship (ending with love affair) between two people from different political worlds placed in the atmosphere of the last faze of the cold war era and the beginning of the USSR collapse. Second: the brilliant main roles performed by Sean Connery (charming as always) and Michelle Pfeiffer (probably her best appearance ever; she was so persuasive in the role of a 'typical' Slavic character and mentality). Third: some amazing scenes of dilapidated Moscow environment, conveying the atmosphere of a derelict regime which is about to be changed. Fourth: excellent, unobtrusive and well attuned music. Fifth: a contrived direction and film editing ('fusion' of two different scenes), etc.All in all, The Russia House is a masterpiece of its kind and I wander about the pretty low rating it got at IMDb.com. It's not fair in this case. It's not fair, indeed!

Is it just me or does Sean Connery have a good track record for making uninteresting movies, particularly where he's the main character? This is much like "Cuba", another bore from him from over a decade earlier. The only movie by him I really liked was the Hitchcock film "Marnie" and he wasn't the central character in that. Watch him as James Bond, though he's far from the best Bond, in my opinion, and his Sixties' Bond is rather tepid compared to the later ones, including Roger Moore. Don't get me started on other stinkers from him, like "Outland", "The Name of the Rose", "The Offence", "The Hunt for Red October", "The Man who would be King", "Rising Sun", "The Molly Maguires", "Wrong is Right"...