Masterful Movie

I saw this movie before reading any reviews, and I thought it was very funny. I was very surprised to see the overwhelmingly negative reviews this film received from critics.

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

There's a more than satisfactory amount of boom-boom in the movie's trim running time.

this is just terrible. It has an impressive cast but wow, this thing stinks on ice. I was prompted to hit the net looking for what could have been going on in Sutherland's life to set off such a stink bomb in what is otherwise a stellar career. He looks thin. He isn't really in character, he's just phoning it in. Some of the supporting cast look and act like they're from Hammer studios. He doesn't connect with them at all. Ruth Gordon has a few moments that help remind us what acting is supposed to be like, even with the shoddy material she's given to work with. Overall, this thing looks done on the super-cheap: sets are flimsy feel like a sound stage, lighting design looks almost fluorescent, actors are poorly made up with blotchy uneven makeup, and the comic bits of business are straight out of a Three Stooges matinée flick (check out the street scene where he nearly gets run over, in the beginning). It was so painful to watch that I just had to bail. What I cannot fathom is how this thing was put together to start with, I mean was he doing this as a favor to the director? He couldn't possibly have been doing it for some quick money (assuming he was broke or a drug addict or something else leading to dire straits)--there was obviously NO money involved in this flick. His career has been on an even keel, he never went into the dumps like Micky Ruorke or Dennis Hopper. If he didn't do it as a favor to a has-been one-trick pony director, then it's a complete MYSTERY to me. You'd have to be pretty drunk to watch this thing. And even that is iffy.

Warning: Spoilers.Burt Kennedy (1922-2001) directed two of the funniest American movies, "Support Your Local Sheriff" (1969) and "Support Your Local Gunfighter" (1971), spot-on western spoofs which also profited by star James Garner's laid-back charm.Nearly twenty years later, in 1987, after a mostly western career, Kennedy helmed the spy spoof "The Trouble with Spies." I would like to say Kennedy's spy spoof had "mixed results" but I can't. It's bad nearly all the way through. And since Kennedy is listed as writer, he can't blame the movie's failure on the material. The whole movie plays like an excuse for several people to have a holiday in Ibiza on someone else's nickle.Donald Sutherland, an unlikely movie star who has never shied from unusual roles, has a confusing character. He's set up as a sort of British Clouseau who is sent on a spy mission in order to get captured and give disinformation to the enemy (this is still Cold War time).The enemy tries to kill or capture him several times, but he always manages to escape. In fact, he seems to know just what to do in every situation. He does not even, like Clouseau, seem to survive out of sheer stupid dumb luck.Take for instance the time he and his girl (Lucy Gutteridge) find themselves in a car balancing precariously on the edge of a quarry. Sutherland's character saves the day. One would expect, given the way he was set up, the girl would save the day. Or perhaps they should have fallen into the quarry. If they survived the fall, it might have been funny. If they had not survived the fall, it would have been a mercy for both of them.Sutherland himself seems not to know how to play the character. Rather than inhabiting the character, as he usually does, he seems to be walking through the movie with it.After Sutherland, "The Trouble with Spies" has no shortage of good actors. Young Lucy Gutteridge, not long after playing her part in the Royal Shakespeare Company's landmark television broadcast of "Nicholas Nickleby" is Sutherland's love interest. Legendary ditherer Michael Hordern and legendary cranky old bat Ruth Gordon have fairly meaty roles. Ned Beatty, who seemed to be an ubiquitous supporting player in the 1970's and 80's, also appears. Cameo parts are held by Robert Morley, playing the "M" part to Sutherlands secret agent, and Gregory Sierra ("Sandford and Son") as a local policeman.Beatty's part makes little or no sense. He seems to be there simply to provide another red herring for our spy. But even red herrings should have a reason to exist.Hordern and Gordon are always fun to watch, and one wonders if the movie might have been better written around their characters than Sutherland's.Perhaps it was the print I saw, but the movie looks like it was done on the cheap. The whole thing has an under-rehearsed look to it. Good actors like Sutherland and Gutteridge are hard to dampen altogether and both give game performances that try to give us something to look at. But it's almost like they haven't been told whether they're in a comedy or a straight spy drama. The production has a tax-write-off feel to it. Parts of it contain actors who never interact with anyone else in the movie, and one cannot help wondering if they were shot later in a desperate attempt to give the movie sense.