Genre – Espionage
Movie Total Runtime – 2 Hours 47 Minutes
Spoilers – Yes

I keep forgetting this movie exists. Even when I had a shelf of movies with their spines easily visible from my chair. The bold letting along the spine of this one would announce its existence – and I’d forget about it shortly afterwards. This had to be a Blockbuster Bargain Bin acquisition.

Whatever, lets get this three hour ordeal started.

We open on someone’s grainy black and white bedroom videos behind the opening credits followed by Name Actor making a ship in a bottle. From the attire and radio this is a period piece set in the sixties. Immediately after I make that assessment, a lication tag pops up to inform us that is is in fact 1961 in DC as Name Actor goes out, picking up his paper from the porch and walking down the drive. Despite the large house, he takes the bus in to the city.

Fire your damned audio editor and turn up the voice volume. The background music is drowning it out. I had to crank the audio AND turn on subtitltes to figure out what people were saying. Apparently they are spies planning the failed invasion of Cuba. Everybody is talking in code phrases. It’s really annoying. We cut to the operations center as the Bay of Pigs falls to pieces. If I can translate the obnoxious “we only talk in code phrases” dialog. They assume they had a mole. Back at his house Name Actor gets an audio tape of some woman along with pictures from the grainy video in the opening. Please pick a plot.

Name Actor meets a contact at a diner who passes him a plot coupon which turns out to lead to top secret FBI files.

Look – if you want me to give a darn about your characters, introduce them and give me some idea who they are. We get a flashback to Name Actor being inducted into a secret society. People who are not properly introduced get philosophical. I’m not sure if the extended flashback is going to me the main plot, or if we’ll be back to the sixties. The exchange with the cagy poetry professor leads Name Actor to a library book where he gets annoyed by a deaf woman. She annoys me even more. It’s meant as a meet cute, but I am far from the mood for that in terms of how this movie is structured.

The contact from the diner appears in the flashback as an FBI agent asking Name Actor to spy on the poetry professor on the grounds he’s a suspected Nazi. The flashback is apparently 1939 given the newsreel Name Actor takes Deaf Girl to. Poetry professor invites a German cabinet minister to speak to his organization, so Name Actor steals his case to rifle through the papers for a list of potential new members to give to FBI Man. As a result, Herr Professor is pushed out of the Yale Faculty.

Name Actor and Deaf Girl continue their uninspired romance arc until the extended flashback ends and we’re listening to the television in 1961. Another company man speaks cryptically to Name Actor about the investigation into the potential mole. We then jump back to 1940 for a secret society retreat. There Name Actor starts a different uninspired romance arc with Senator’s Daughter. Name Actor‘s dialog becomes overly stilted, but it’s hard to tell from his normal lack of emotive range anyway. Name Actor gets introduced to DeNiro playing a Diabetic DeNiro who recruits Name Actor into the OSS.

Senator’s Daughter advances their uninspired romance arc in a manner which makes me question her moral character. We find that Name Actor is still involved with Deaf Girl, so now he’s cheating in addition to lying. The complication comes from that affair making Senator’s Daughter pregnant and her wedding Name Actor. At the wedding reception, he gets orders to deploy overseas. End flashback.

I’m going to be honest, I’m getting bored. We get a breakdown of the contents of the picture and audio tape Name Actor got earlier. Then we’re in London in 1941. Name Actor is introduced to British Intelligence where his counterpart turns out to be Herr Professor, who had been working at Yale to uncover Nazi sympathizers, only Name Actor and FBI Man ruined the operation. We get a montage of learning fieldcraft. A number of characters from the 1961 timeline are introduced in this part of the flashback. Name Actor is once again sicced on Herr Professor this time because the British suspect him. Herr Professor advises Name Actor to leave the business shortly before Herr Professor is assassinated.

Back in 1961, the technical services have cleaned up more of the audio and picture to extract more details. Then it’s 1945 in Berlin. The scramble for Nazi Scientists is underway. Name Actor‘s Soviet counterpart talks too much as the flashback timeline segueways into the cold war. We find that Senator’s Daughter is likely having an affair with ‘her new friend’, so Name Actor gets involved with Half-Deaf Translator. It is as uninspired as the other romance arcs. But Name Actor realizes Haf-Deaf Translator is really a mole for the Soviets. She does not last long.

I really am bored.

Did this movie really need to be three hours? I’m halfway in and I don’t care what happens to these people.

That really is the kiss of death for any work – when the audience goes “I don’t care what happens to these people.”

After the war, Diabetic DeNiro visits Name Actor to recruit him into the CIA proper. We’re supposed to believe Diabetic DeNiro has morals and wants strict oversight of the new organization. But his character is also almost dead from the diabetes.

In 1947 the company dumps a plague of locusts on the coffee crop of a Central American country leaning too Soviet. The Soviets in turn send the severed finger of the CIA agent in-country back to the agency. Presumably the rest of him was dumped somewhere out of the way. Name Actor‘s home life disintegrates because he is very much not a people person. Some minor regime change later, and it’s Christmas. Diabetic DeNiro is somehow not yet dead. On the way back, Name Actor asks FBI Man for the files he doesn’t get until 1961.

1953, KGB Man reaches out to Name Actor to defect offering a great deal of info, including about Soviet Counterpart. It sounds like a trap. They extract KGB Man anyway. He fails the polygraph – that pseudoscientific claptrap. KGB Man talks about Soviet involvement with Castro. We skip forward to 1958 to an awful translation of a Russian play. Name Actor dips out early to meet up with Deaf Girl, who he spotted in the crowd. They resume their uninspired romance arc.

Why am I still watching this? I still don’t care what happens to these people.

What does happen is Senator’s Daughter gets photographs delivered of the tryst between Name Actor and Deaf Girl, presumably taken by the Soviets. It might even be implied they somehow got Deaf Girl into the crowd in the first place.

Name Actor meets Soviet Counterpart to discus the Cuba issue.

The timelines start to converge as JFK announces his run for President. As he does, another KGB Man claiming to be the same man as the previous KGB Man defects, claiming the previous KGB Man is a counterintelligence operative. Unlike first KGB Man, they beat the crap out of this one and waterboard him. When this fails to affirm their suspicions, they dose him with LSD. This does get some truth out of him – about the failures of the Soviet system. He maintains his identity before self-defenistrating.

Name Actor‘s son joins the secret society and asks to join the CIA. This creates yet another marital rift between Name Actor and Senator’s Daughter. The story finally circles back around to planning for the Bay of Pigs.

I am two hours in and it feels like four. A proper slow burn story should at least have gotten me invested in the characters at the 2/3rds mark. I am fighting between wanting it to be over and simple bloody-mindedness.

Name Actor‘s son overhears information about the Bay of Pigs. I was thinking he was the leak, but I didn’t articulate it in text. I also suspect he’s one of the people in the image being processed in 1961. Name Actor tries to mend his marital relationship, but she immediately tells him she’s moving to Arizona.

The location of the grainy photograph is narrowed down to the Congo. Name Actor locates the hotel. In the room, he finds the ship in a watch he gave to his son after the second world war. Soviet Counterpart intercepts him and gives a tour of the empty room where the KGB had previously been but cleared out. The woman is clearly a Soviet Honeypot from the recording Soviet Counterpart plays to taunt Name Actor. Soviet Counterpart claims Honeypot has fallen for Name Actor‘s son and tries to flip Name Actor as an asset in exchange for protecting the son.

Name Actor finds out that Son has proposed to Honeypot, but Son refuses to believe the warnings about her identity. They separate on poor terms.

Name Actor finds evidence that first KGB Man was a plant, and he is removed via FBI arrest. This leads to another meeting with Soviet Counterpart where Name Actor declines to become a Soviet asset. Soviet Counterpart agrees to not burn the Son, but states that he will still come seeking a favor someday. He further poisons the well about Honeypot’s loyalties. This segues into a scene where Honeypot is getting on an airplane in the Congo and Son is preparing for the pending wedding.

The Congolese give Honeypot a free skydiving lesson, but parachutes cost extra. As she was unprepared for the added expense, gravity takes its toll.

CIA Director resigns after the contents of the FBI files are quietly sent to him. The final scenes of the movie tie back to something I didn’t bother mentioning from the secret society initiation. Oh so much symbolism. It might carry weight if I cared what happens to these characters. I was carried to the end by Interia and bloody-mindedness to find that DeNiro was the director. I’m going to guess that nobody in the production had the authority to tell him ‘No’, and as such he produced a dull slog of a story that sorely needed cleaning up.

Don’t bother with this.

PS – I kept referring to the lead as “Name Actor” because I realized a Team America joke would have too many loud caps shouting “MATT DAMON!” at you, distracting from the surrounding text.

Mercifully, the long, long credits cut a chunk off the runtime at the end.