Review

John Schlesinger tries his best to make this outlandish yet somehow still rather slight real-life story about Cold War espionage interesting – mainly by fleshing out two young, handsome, and fairly charismatic characters played by Timothy Hutton and Sean Penn. For as long as the film stays in the world of clandestine meetings and obscure information exchanges, you get a sense that it might actually have some real bearing on something. But as the denouement approaches, you realise that you'd need to be deeply affected by Cold War paranoia to accept this story as worthy of cinematic treatment, especially considering the vague motivation conveyed for why our two protagonists did what they did. That being said, the two young stars demonstrate their talent in the leads, with Penn stealing the show with an extravagant performance which seems inspired by Dustin Hoffman's Ratso Rizzo from Schlesinger's own Midnight Cowboy. Hutton's performance, on the other hand, is too technical. We get no real sense of the passion that supposedly drove his actions. Also with David Suchet in a delightful part as Daulton Lee's Russian liaison.