THE PIGEON TUNNEL*

The problem with Errol Morris' latest documentary is its slightness.  It takes the form of an interview with the now deceased Cold War spy novelist John Le Carre. The problem is that Le Carre aka David Cornwell is a practiced liar and has no problem answering only the questions he wants to answer in exactly the way he wants to answer them. His protestations of candidness merely add to the mockery of the project.  And let's be clear, David Cornwell does not actually want to reveal anything that he hasn't already revealed in interviews over the years, or indeed in his recent biography of the same title.

The problem is that this is a rather sanitised version of his story, shorn of all of his sexual misdemeanours. And this film, and the book upon which it is based, are rather a nasty revenge tactic played upon his official biographer Adam Sisman. When Sisman drafted his book, Cornwell persuaded him to leave out all of the sexual infidelity and to only publish after Cornwell's death. Cornwell then proceeded to publish his own autobiography to reclaim his narrative from Sisman, and now this film is being released precisely at the point when Sisman publishes his sex-filled follow up.

This all sounds like I don't like David Cornwell. Actually I am indifferent. I just don't trust him.  I LOVE the works of John Le Carre, and the Smiley novels in particular. I even picked my Oxford college on the basis that it was his alma mater.  My point is that if you already know and love the novels of John le Carre, there will be nothing new in this documentary. And if you don't already know and love the novels of John le Carre why on earth would you watch?

The story here is the one we all know. Cornwell was born in the postwar period to lower middle class parents. His mother abandoned him at 5. His father was a fraudster and bankrupt who periodically paid for Cornwell to have the upper class education he (the father) aspired to. Cornwell therefore grew up only knowing duplicity and a lack of love.  He goes to Bern (not mentioned in this doc) and then to Oxford where a Fellow recruits him to spy on the other students, arranges for him to continue when his father has no money, arranges teaching jobs for him, and finally a fully-fledged but short-lived career as a spy. He drops out and writes a spy novel that is immediately wildly successful, continues in that vein, shags around, makes this film, then dies. 

The stuff on Kim Philby IS interesting, though covered in other interviews. I find it fascinating that Cornwall recognises addiction to lying in Philby. Did he in himself?  But of course there is a category difference.  Philby was a traitor, and in Cornwell's words "evil".  I just wished we had had a more nuanced discussion of Cornwell's own relationship to his spying, his lying, and his dual persona in this film.

THE PIGEON TUNNEL has a running time of 93 minutes and is rated PG-13. It played Telluride and London 2023 and will be released on Apple TV on October 20th.

OUR KIND OF TRAITOR

OUR KIND OF TRAITOR is a spy thriller directed by Susanna White (PARADE'S END) and adapted by Hossein Amini (THE TWO FACES OF JANUARY) from a novel by John le Carre.  It stars Ewan McGregor as a feckless cheating academic who tries to redeem himself in his own and his wife's eyes by carrying a message from a Russian mafia money launderer to MI6.  Problem is, aforementioned gangster (Stellan Skarsgaard) doesn't trust the British government to get his family to safety and demands that the husband and wife (Naomie Harris) take part in the negotiations as a vouchsafe.  This is a wise move, as the British spy making the negotiations (Damian Lewis) is in the midst of some backroom politics orchestrated by a corrupt politician (Jeremy Northam).  The result is a thriller than attempts to work on two levels - will the couple and the spies get both the mafiosi and his family out of harm's way?  And will his information expose the corruption at the heart of the City of London?

Sadly, the film fails on all counts. Skarsgaard is horribly mis-cast as the mafioso, Dima.  He makes no attempt at a Russian accent and just acts bigger and louder.  He doesn't come across as a successful financier at all.  McGregor is good as the feckless spy but poor Naomie Harris has very little to do. And Damian Lewis is over-styled and over-broad in his performance - playing a kind of caricature of the over-confident British spy - as if auditioning for some kind of 1970s spy film, or that godawful recent movie remake of TINKER TAILOR.  Behind the camera lens, director Susanna White has no idea how to create a sense of tension in directing action. Scenes in a French sports club are almost laughably absurd as spies and mafiosi dip in and out of steamy saunas and massage rooms.  And the very conceit that somehow an ordinary couple could double up and help out MI6 in extraditing a source is just patent nonsense.  Finally, the film (and arguably the book's) heavy-handed political agenda is just too obvious and lacking in nuance to be interesting.  

OUR KIND OF TRAITOR has a running time of 108 minutes and is rated R. The movie is on release in Italy, Finland, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Denmark, Croatia, Hungary, Kazakhstan, Macedonia, Serbia, Russia, Estonia, the UK, Ireland, Norway, Kuwait, Bulgaria, Sweden and Lithuania.  It opens in June in Israel, the Netherlands, Ukraine, the Philippines, Belgium and France; in July in the USA, Canada, Germany, Portugal, Singapore, Australia, Greece and Brazil; on August 4th in Thailand; on August 18th in New Zealand; on October 21st in Japan and on November 18th in Spain.

TINKER, TAILOR, SOLDIER, SPY - An essay on the novel and its adaptations

I had such a visceral reaction against Tomas Alfredson’s much vaunted new film adaptation of John le Carre’s 1974 novel “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy” that I couldn’t bring myself to review it for some time.  I have decided that the best way to explain this reaction is to describe what I believe to be the strengths of John le Carre as a writer; what I respond to so strongly in his novel; my response to the seminal Alec Guinness TV series and the more recent Simon Russell Beale radio series; and finally why I feel that Alfredson’s adaptation does a disservice to that novel.  Naturally, this essay contains many spoilers.  It also contains, more than usual, a deeply subjective reaction to the material being discussed. I do not pretend that my objections to this film will be shared by many who watch the film. Indeed, contrary to my view of the film as muddled, crass, arid, and fundamentally mis-judged, the movie is being touted as an Oscar contender, no less.

JOHN LE CARRE

To my mind, John le Carre is one of the finest novelists of the twentieth –and indeed twenty-first century.  Because he happens to cast many of his explorations of character and geopolitics in the guise of spy novels,  he is typically seen as a genre writer.  I think this is a tremendous mistake, and underplays his ability to pen compelling, fully developed characters, and to explore the complications and compromises with which we all live – at a personal, professional and political level.  He is, for me, the ultimate essayist on the post-modern condition – the difficulty of living in a world that lives in the shadow of the horrors of World War Two – where moral absolutes have been shaken, and the triumphant est has been somehow sullied and compromised.  And he is, par excellence, the great chronicler of the particular condition of post-war Britain – the country that won World War Two, but was bankrupted in the process  - and ultimately lost its Empire and its place as a first-tier global power. 

What John le Carre does – what makes him so compelling -  is that he explodes the myths of glamour and success and the clear lines between ally and enemy that make the Bond novels so facile and fantastic, in the literal sense of the word.  Ian Fleming depicted a Britain that was in suspended animation – forever at the high water mark of World War Two.  Fleming’s novels depict a country that has retained its sense of moral and even intellectual superiority, an equal player in the Great Game of the Cold War.  The reality of course, was dramatically different -  and it’s this drastic psychic adjustment that John le Carre depicts so brilliantly.  He shows us the tragedy of Cold War espionage – a tragedy both of process and purpose.  The process is bureaucratic, thwarted by internal politics, and housed in dank, drab, unspectacular offices in the crappier parts of London. It’s a world of chits, weak tea, the patient stake-out, blown missions and shoddy furniture.  The purpose is similarly shabby.  A generation of men raised to Empire is consigned to low-level voyeurism in order to puff up the delusional belief that a post-imperial Britain is still a major player in foreign affairs.  Any romantic notion of derring-do seems faintly ridiculous.  The most that the Cold War British spy can cling to is the notion that there is some kind of moral superiority – that after all, for all the frailties of post-Imperial Britain, they do not at least suffer from the Soviet disease of fanaticism. 

TINKER, TAILOR, SOLDIER, SPY – THE NOVEL

The novel “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy” is framed as an investigation.  Retired spy George Smiley is called in by his political masters to investigate allegations that there is a Soviet mole, “Gerald” at the top of the British Secret Intelligence Service, known as “The Circus”.  Smiley comes to believe that the mole exists, that he has been passing high level secrets from the Americans to the Soviets – secrets bought from the Americans with counterfeit intelligence, “Witchcraft” supplied by the Soviet spy-chief, “Karla”, through a double-agent that the mole is running. Thus, not only is the Circus thoroughly compromised but Britain has been made to look a fool in the eyes of her American allies – thoroughly underlining our second-rate status in the post-war world.  This investigation takes place through careful reading of old documents, and interviews with retired Circus spies.  This is a battle of wits – intelligence – information-gathering – carried out in back-street bed-and-breakfast rooms, clapped out caravans and the quiet houses of Oxford. Pulses race when Smiley’s side-kick, Peter Guillam has to filch an old file from Circus – or when Smiley believes he is being followed – but this is not the main modus operandi of Smiley or Le Carre.  This is the novel of the quiet, probing conversation, rather than the car chase.  And, most importantly, even though Smiley succeeds in uncovering his mole, there is no real triumph.  The Circus – and Smiley and Control’s legacy – is in tatters, and while he may take over as interim-head – this is no return to the pre-mole glory years of wartime intelligence. The slow decay is arrested but there is no restoration to the Circus’ previous stature.  Karla still exists, the American allies still have the better of us, and Smiley is still painfully aware that he, essentially, an anachronism.

What is the nature of the betrayal that has occurred?  Of course, the mole, Bill Haydon, has betrayed, and as Smiley’s wife Ann says, he has betrayed completely – his class, his service, his country, his lovers, his friends. And it is Le Carre’s depiction of the emotional betrayals that I find even more compelling than his fascinating insights into the reality of post-war espionage. My contention is that “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy” is a love story first and foremost – and that in Le Carre’s world it is loyalty to a lover that marks out the “good man” in a post-modern world where there are few moral absolutes.   George Smiley is a great romantic, not just in his taste for German literature, but because of his unfailing loyalty to his wife Ann, and despite her serial infidelity, her emotional loyalty to him.  Karla see Smiley’s devotion to Ann as his blind spot, and exploits it by making Haydon instigate an affair with Ann – but Smiley sees it as his strength.  Moral frailty, humanity is the only defense the West has against the fanaticism of the Soviet.  This link – between love of Ann – and what makes the Cold War worth fighting, not to mention winnable, is key.  And it’s why throughout the novel, characters are awkwardly asking Smiley to pass on their regards to Ann, or embarrassing Smiley with Circus gossip about her infidelity. It’s also why the pivotal scene in the novel will always be the meeting in post-war India, where Smiley tries to recruit a silent Karla, revealing far too much about himself, and allowing Karla to steal his cigarette lighter – an engraved gift from Ann.  I also think that for me, the real resolution in the novel, the consequence of the investigation that matters most, is not Smiley’s re-instatement as acting Control, but his reconciliation with Ann. It’s as though exposing Haydon can clear the way for them to speak openly and honestly about what happened.

There are other love stories that permeate the text. Indeed, the novel opens – the action is instigated – when Ricki Tarr, former Circus operative and tough guy, tells cabinet secretary Oliver Lacan that there is a mole in the Circus, information he has discovered through a love affair with a Soviet spy he now wants Circus to extradite. An imperfect love story to be sure – Iryna uses Tarr to get her message to Circus in exchange for defection – and Tarr uses his information to come back into the fold, and ideally bring both his lover and his common-law wife and child with him.

A third key love story within the novel is that between Bill Haydon and his fellow Oxonian and Circus recruit, Jim Prideaux – the debonair artistic aristocrat and the athletic, no-nonsense side-kick.  Fatefully, it is Prideaux that Control chooses to send on the doomed Operation Testify - an off-the-books mission to pick up a Soviet defector in the Czech Republic – a defector who knew the identity of the mole that Control was sure existed, and which Prideaux, in his heart, knew was Haydon.   It is heartbreaking to conceive of Prideaux, suspecting Haydon, but still warning him that this mission would expose “the mole”, and perhaps suspecting that Haydon would have to sacrifice him to cover his identity.  Consequently, the most scathing exchange between Smiley and Haydon concerns not his betrayal of Ann, nor of his country, but of Prideaux.  Haydon admits that he sent Prideaux to his fate – it had to be someone that Control trusted, and it had to be a Czech speaker – and makes an excuse “well, I got him back, didn’t I?”  Smiley responds, “Yes, that was good of you”. What depths of antipathy and disgust lie behind that response.  This betrayal proves fatal. Prideaux strangles Haydon –an intimate assassination.

The fourth love story is perhaps the most romantic – the love for the glamour and mystique of the “old Circus” – when the spies were fighting in a real war, with tangible enemies, before bureaucracy replaced  daring exploits.  It is this romantic love that the sacked researcher Connie Sachs – who first rumbled Gerald’s handler – feels for “her boys”.  A romantic love that leads to disappointment and alcoholism. Connie tells Smiley that if it’s really bad, she doesn’t want to know, but her tragedy is that she does know already. If not the identity of the real mole, then the wider truth that the Old Circus is utterly shot.  It is also the romanticism that leads the new generation of post-war spies to idealize Bill Haydon as a Lawrence of Arabia figure and to turn away from the quiet, dull methods of Smiley.  Their disillusion – and anger – is depicted in the character of Peter Guillam, who punches Haydon when he is exposed in the safe house.  It is a love that Smiley seems never to have had – always seeing things far more clearly – seeing himself as sort of “commercial traveler” trawling for defectors. But what makes him lovable is that he still has his love of Ann, his belief, ultimately in the West, for all its failings, and none of the cynicism that infects Roy Bland and the avaricious oleaginous Toby Esterhase.  I wonder a little about Percy Alleline, the puffed up Scottish dupe who is catapulted to the head of the Circus on the tide of Witch-craft, the bureaucratic man who loves the apparent importance of secret committees. He seems to hold no love for the old Circus and yet does have that same romantic delusion that, through Witchcraft, Britain can once again be the power that it was.

THE 1979 TV ADAPTATION AND THE 2009 RADIO ADAPTATION.

The 1979 television adaptation of the novel is to my mind both perfect in its own right as television, and as an interpretation of the novel. It seems to get everything right, from casting, to atmosphere, to production design and the superlative opening and closing credits. The opening credits showing ever more angry Russian dolls opening to reveal a faceless doll at the core – and the final credits roll to the soundtrack of a college choir singing a beautiful new setting of the Nunc Dimittis – Smiley supposedly laying his legacy to rest although we know it is a partial and compromised peace that he wins.

Alec Guinness’ Smiley is quiet, bemused, tired, but when interviewing has a steeliness and a ruthlessness that hints at how formidable he truly is. Ian Richardson’s Haydon is utterly glamorous and languorous and convinces of his aristocratic pedigree. I particularly like Michael Aldridge’s smug Percy Alleline – the pompous club and committee man; and Bernard Hepstone is simply dazzling as the over-looked and then over-promoted Toby Esterhase. Beryl Reid’s cameo as Connie Sachs is rich, heart-breaking, tragic. And Patrick Stewart as the young Karla is devastatingly intense, frightening and fanatical even though he never says a word – the spectre that hangs over Smiley’s world.   But most of all I love the look and feel of the show.  The fact that the Circus really is just a shabby over-crowded office on Cambridge Circus in Soho – painted in civil service magnolia and hospital green.  The fact that Smiley solves the case through reading dusty files in a cramped room in a bed and breakfast in Paddington. The damp and mist of the boarding school, the rain in Sloane Square....

Of course, one could argue that the TV adaptation was bound to be nuanced and  faithful, given that it had the luxury of seven hours of screen time, was filmed close to the time in which the novel was set, with a screenplay jointly penned by the author.  But the recent 2009 BBC Radio 4 adaptation of the novel into a three-hour radio play suggests that is possible to condense the novel and retain its thematic richness.  Shaun McKenna didn’t alter any of the structural and stylistic traits that made the novel successful. Specifically, he kept much of Le Carre’s dialogue – the wonderfully jargon-filled language of the Circus, particularly in the case of Connie Sachs. Second, he kept the Ricki Tarr-Iryna love story as the opening hook of the series.  Third, he put Ann right at the centre of the play, by making her a kind of internal voice of conscience for Smiley - an inspired and effective device.  And finally, he made sure that no matter what else was cut, the set-pieces – Smiley meeting Karla; the Tarr-Iryna story; the unmasking at the Camden house; the final Smiley-Haydon conversation; and Alleline lording it over Control with Witchcraft; were kept intact. The casting was also particularly felicitous, with the brilliant Simon Russell-Beale as Smiley.

TOMAS ALFREDSON’S 2011 FEATURE FILM

And so we come to the review.  Tomas Alfredson (LET THE RIGHT ONE IN) has created a two-hour film based on a screenplay by the late Bridget O’Connor and Peter Straughan (SIXTY SIX, THE MEN WHO STARE AT GOATS).  It is a free adaptation, and has to be to reduce the run-time, but the essential story and period are the same.  What changes are the order in which the interlocking pieces are shown; the emphasis each part is given; and, to my mind, a fundamental misreading of the source text which results in a more facile, fatuous narrative.

Let’s start with the  misreading first – as this is the most important and fateful problem with the film.  The first misreading has to do with the nature of the Circus, and the “victory” that Smiley achieves in uncovering the mole. For Le Carre, the Circus is anti-Bond –it’s anonymous, shabby – just a crowded office building in Soho.  But in this film, the Circus is a monumental Victorian complex that contains, Bond-like, a hidden modernist cube that contains wide opening workspaces, nifty document carriers etc, wide banks of phone operators….The design of the Circus is nowhere more at odds with the spirit of the novel than in the design of the completely sealed ultra-modernistic, lurid orange block that is meant to be a kind of bug-proof inner sanctum for Control and his top men, but which looks more like an over-designed Bond lair. In the Q&A after the British Film Institute preview screening, Alfredson said that the concept came from trying to think of a completely unattached environment –closed and spy-proof- when of course the whole point of the novel is that the entire Circus has been penetrated and bugged.  Worse still, once Alfredson has created this ridiculous room he feels compelled to use it for a final set-piece which is entirely out of keeping with the tone of the novel – the triumphal march of Smiley back to the room in which he and his boss were ignominiously turfed out, to sit in the chair once occupied by his boss, who has now been vindicated.  The tone of that scene strikes me as simplistic and crass – and an utter misreading of the source material.

A second misreading is the treatment of love.  This is most striking in the near-elimination of Ann as a character. She is never seen, except as an arse that Haydon is groping at the Christmas party.  The constant badgering of Smiley – the gossip he has to withstand – is absent. The pivotal cigarette lighter scene with Karla is underplayed.  As a result, Smiley seems less human – more opaque (he barely speaks for the first half hour of the film) – less frail – less vulnerable – frankly, less compelling.  The movie become all procedure and less emotion.  The same impact is felt by the underplaying of the homosexual relationship between Haydon and Prideaux. Prideaux is just another pawn Haydon uses – his torture a political rather than an emotional betrayal – and Haydon’s murder an act less meaningful.   The only hint of thwarted love comes from Kathy Burke’s Connie Sachs – a character that now comes across as more banal, less dangerously alcoholic and angry than in the novel – and Peter Guillam, who has been re-cast as homosexual and has to cast off a lover as the Circus turns its gaze upon him.  The emotion that Benedict Cumerbatch displays in this parting scene is powerful – and thank god for just a flash of humanity in this emotionally arid, procedural film – but can you imagine what how much powerful that emotion would have been if placed at the very heart of the story, in the Ann-George or Haydon-Prideaux relationships?

Less important, but showing a general lack of vision and understanding, are the countless small changes to the details of the novel that are scattered through the film. Of course, a screenwriter must be free to adapt his material and serve the medium of cinema rather than be faithful to the novel.  But these are petty changes that do not serve to compress the material or heighten the drama, so why make a change at all?  Operation Testify takes place in Hungary rather than the Czech Republic. Why?  Does Budapest have a tax break on shooting there? Smiley lives in Islington rather than Chelsea. Again why? What does that add? The character of Sam Collins is given the name of Jerry Westerby, but without combining their character functions. So why not leave him as Sam Collins, and also why not leave him as the manager of a casino rather than of a pool hall? Oliver Lacon  doesn’t live in a Berkshire Camelot but in a cutting edge 1970s designed house – utterly out of keeping with his character but I suppose allowing Alfredson and Hoytema to indulge their penchant for shooting through glass, as if to make some heavy-handed point that we, the audience, are voyeurs too.  Why is Smiley’s B&B in Liverpool Street rather than Paddington? Just so Alfredson can indulge foreign audiences with a backdrop showing St Pauls?  And, in a movie with scrupulously 1970s cars, costumes and interiors, why does the B&B  look like a 2011 warehouse conversion rather than a grubby townhouse.

As for the casting, it’s hit and miss.  Gary Oldman is a good Smiley – the writing gives him less than he should have to work with – but he is fine. Tom Hardy is bang on the money as Ricki Tarr -  John Hurt is the best Control I have ever seen - Benedict Cumberbatch is brilliant as Guillam – carrying the only truly emotionally charged scene AND the only truly dramatic interlude when he filches a file from Circus.  Karla - well there is no Karla! Poor Ciaran Hinds gets nothing to do as Roy Bland. And David Dencik is completely anonymous as Toby Esterhase – one of the most compelling characters in the novel. And the usually brilliant Toby Jones is utterly wrong as Percy Alleline – he has none of the power, the malevolence, of the pompous boor.  He’s just small and sniveling and hardly an opponent for Smiley.  Because Bland, Esterhase and Alleline are inadequately penned and portrayed – and because Firth has just one an Oscar, the astute audience member who hasn’t read the book, will figure out who the mole is as soon as the pieces are in play.  As for Firth, I think his role is problematic.  The actor has charisma, but does Haydon, the character, really come across as a latter day Lawrence of Arabia? Do we get that he is mocking the bureaucratic system, that underneath that soupy charm is a deeply disaffected, cynical and selfish man? This isn't helped by the fact that the screenwriters seriously shortchange Firth in the scene where Haydon justifies his actions to Smiley. In the novel, we can't really sympathise with Haydon but we do at least understand. I’d love to hear from any readers who have had the patience to read through this essay, who have seen the film, but hadn’t read the book. I’d love to know if you really felt you left the screening understanding why Haydon had done it.  Because if you don't really know why he's done it - other than some glib faux-answer regarding aesthetics, and you're left with Smiley triumphant in his orange box - what have you really learned about the Circus, about betrayal and about love?

TINKER, TAILOR, SOLDIER, SPY played Venice 2011 to rave reviews.  It opens this weekend in the UK and Ireland. It opens in Australia on October 27th. It opens on December 9th in Portugal, Turkey and the USA; on December 15th in the Netherlands; on December 23rd in Spain and on December 25th in Sweden. It opens on January 20th in Italy; on February 1st in Italy, Belgium, France and Germany; and on February 9th in Denmark.

THE GOOD SHEPHERD - the duracell bunny of spy flicks

Like the Duracell bunny, THE GOOD SHEPHERD goes on...and on....and on...with nary a emotional hook or surprising plot twist to keep you going. I swear if I hadn't been on a date I would have walked out. Over designed and directed, this ponderous three hour movie drags its heels through twenty years of the life of the American secret service like so much cement.

The story sees a young Matt Damon recruited into the prototype of the CIA - working for US Secret Ops from London and then Berlin. Married to a woman he does not love (Angelina Jolie) and father to a son he barely sees, he ascends the bureaucrat ladder until, twenty years later, he becomes involved in the Cuban invasion. Insofar as the story has an emotionally sterile man at its heart, it should come as no surprise that I felt so emotionally uninvolved in the film. Damon's performance does what it should, but with the minutes ticking on I felt strangely uninvolved in Jolie's emotional life.

As a spy thriller, the movie fares even worse. The writer tries to inject a little Smiley-Karla competition by pitting Damon's CIA man against a KGB counter-part codenamed Ulysses. The denouement is a weak mirror of the means by which Smiley finally ensnares Karla, for all you fans of the infinitely superior early spy-novels of John le Carre. The film-makers were unwise in bringing such a comparison to the viewers attention. Where le Carre used to be deft, economical, cynical but still a little romantic; where characters were quirky, fascinating, constantly evolving; Eric Roth gives us the most turgid screenplay I have seen filmed since MUNICH. It's no coincidence.

Other minor gripes: Billy Crudup makes a hash of an upper class English accent in his portrayal of a British spy; Alec Baldwin is wasted as a Fed; as is John Turturro as Damon's side-kick/heavy; the make-up do not make Damon look convincing as an older man; ditto Jolie as an older woman.....

THE GOOD SHEPHERD was released in the US in December 2006 and has since opened in Brazil, Australia, Germany, Israel, the Netherlands, Austria, Venezuela, Argentina, Russia, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Poland and the UK. It opens in Latvia and Sweden on March 2nd; in Turkey and Italy on March 9th; in France and Switzerland on March 21st and in Singapore on March 29th. It opens in Spain on April 4th and in Belgium on April 18th. THE GOOD SHEPHERD is released on Region 1 DVD at the end of March.

THE LAST KING OF SCOTLAND - well-acted but...

THE LAST KING OF SCOTLAND is a much-hyped first feature from acclaimed documentary film-maker, Kevin MacDonald. It features Forest Whitaker (GHOST DOG, PANIC ROOM) in a fantastic performance as the Ugandan dictator, Idi Amin. Set in the 1970s and filmed on location in Uganda, the movie uses hand-held documentary style photography, editing and vintage tunes to bring Amin's reign to life. For the first time on film we see how bloody charming Amin was - what a popular demagogue - and the full extent of his bizarre love of the Scottish people.* We get far less of a feel for what a menace he was - even in a grotesque scene of violence near the end. It is filmed in such a way as to seem almost like an exploitation flick - it seems disembodied from the rest of the film - surreal rather than anchoring the drama of the story.

Come to think of it, there is quite a lot I didn't like about this movie, performances aside. I didn't like the insertion of the early love interest with Gillian Anderson's perfectly pitched upper class Brit. Perhaps it really happened, but it just held the narrative up. I didn't like the orchestral score. It was over-worked and manipulative, even resorting to the dreaded high-pitched violins at a moment of gruesome horror. I didn't like the Kay Amin story-line. Again, it may have happened that way but it was something I had seen in a million different films, notwithstanding the exact rendering of the denouement. And finally, I didn't like the protagonist. This is not a comment on James McAvoy's performance - which is A-okay. Rather on the character itself. Nicholas comes across as a wilfully naive, callow, self-important man in over his head. He turns his nose up at his father's quiet propriety and at Simon McBurney's scene-stealing oily diplomat, but these are the better men. In particular, Nicholas takes the diplomat's insistence on "clarification" as obfuscation - but they are fateful words. I realise that it's usually praise-worthy for a director to allow a protagonist to be unlikeable, but I found it a great bar to my empathising with his situation and his downfall. And isn't that a point of a film like this? There but for the Grace of God go I? After all, there is little else to it. Kevin MacDonald has not lifted his eyes up from this human morality tale to look at the political or social context behind Idi Amin's story.

Overall then, THE LAST KING OF SCOTLAND joins that roll-call of London Film Fest gala films - SYLVIA, THE CONSTANT GARDENER, GOOD NIGHT & GOOD LUCK - with worthy intentions, compelling central performances - and yet no real bite.

THE LAST KING OF SCOTLAND played Telluride, Toronto and London and has been on limited release in the US. It opens in the UK and Sweden in January 2007, in Germany, the Netherlands, Brazil, Belgium, Argentina, Italy and France in February 2007. *Not bizarre because Scots are inherently unloveable but bizarre insofar as he goes around dressed in a kilt, naming his kids Campbell and Mackenzie and offering to liberate Scotland from the English!

Ten TV programmes that make me the cynical, paranoid, greedy, capitalist bastard that I am today

In reverse chronological order:

1. 24 (FOX, 2001) The sheer audacity of the final five minutes of season one restored my faith in big-budget mainstream TV. The fast pace, great plotting and character of Sherry Palmer - a charismatic, evil, strong female - had me addicted. After season two it disintegrated into a marketing exercise for FORD, but in its heyday this series ruined a whole genre of movies for me.

2. MY SO-CALLED LIFE (ABC, Channel 4, 1994) was the only high-school series that got a hold of me. GRANGE HILL was nothing like where I went to school and was just too pat - cheekie kids getting into scrapes - and the whole Zammo on smack storyline was again fifty leagues removed from my life. MY SO-CALLED LIFE was bang on. The heroine, Angela, was just a normal kid. Not so pretty, not so smart, not fucked-up by irresponsible parents. But still dealing with her friends' alcoholism and homosexuality and her own messy love-life. I was devestated when it got cancelled.

3. G.B.H. (Channel 4, 1991). Written by the UK's most important contemporary dramatist, Alan Bleasdale, G.B.H. provided a book-end to the social and political upheavals of the Thatcher era. It pitted the megolamaniacal council leader Michael Murray (based on Derek Hatton) against Old Labour headmaster Jim Nelson. It showed how the political machinations at the highest levels - games played for power rather than belief - screw over the lives of normal voters. Intricately plotted and acted, the slowly revealed plot twist answers for much of my political cynicism. It also explains much of the genesis of, and naked opportunism of, the New Labour project. As the shit-rain starts to fall on Blair, I long for another Bleasdale play to chart a course through it all.

4. TWIN PEAKS (ABC, 1990) exploded every convention of what a TV serial could and should do. The visuals were beautiful, the music was haunting, the characters were kooky, beautiful, sick, twisted and full of secrets. The second series lost its way, but the final frames showing the apple-pie wholesome Agent Dale Cooper looking into a mirror at the face of BOB scared me silly. More proof, if any were needed, that David Lynch is the most important visual artist of our time and that the small screen can be used as effectively as the big screen. Shame on all those who do not try.

5. THE NEW STATESMAN SERIES 1,2 and 3 (ITV, 1987) was a vile, brutal, political satire of the worst excesses of the Thatcherite era that had me and my mates re-enacting swathes of dialogue in the playground. It featured Rik Mayall as the corrupt, nouveau riche Tory MP, Alan B'Stard. B'Stard mocked Old Labour crusty Bob Crippen, bullied the landed wet, Piers Fletcher-Dervish MP and mocked the press. B'Stard was brilliantly charismatic and you wanted him to win, so pathetic were his opponents - thus revealing the singular truth that in the Thatcher years, politics on both sides of the fence was a pretty grubby affair. Years later, my cousin Bobby would famously use the line "Right, I'm off to Stringfellows to commit adultery!" with alarming regularity. Of course, THE NEW STATESMAN became unfunny when Thatcher was ousted and replaced with that grey pillock, John Major. Not least of the charges that can be laid against that treacherous bastard, Heseltine's, door is that he pulled the rug from under much of Britain's best comedy.

6. BLACKADDER, SERIES 2,3 and 4 (BBC, 1983-) Blackadder is a peculiarly British comedy that combines dry black wit, political satire and good old-fashioned slapstick comedy. The first series was a bit weak, but by the second it hit its stride. Set in Elizabethan England, then Georgian and finally World War One, Blackadder sent up the great figures of each era in 1066 AND ALL THAT stylee. Blackadder is a malevolent, self-centred man a rung below the in-bred, idiotic ruling class, and frustrated by his infinitely greater merit. Rowan Atkinson's plaintiff sigh of "Oh, God," every time, Percy, Baldrick or the Prince Regent utter some imbecilic plan just sums up what it is to endure life in this country. Not only is Blackadder bloody funny, but in the final episode of Series 4, where the protagonists go over the top of a trench to their death, it is incredibly moving. There is no more eloquent display of the futility and horror of war than those thirty minutes. APOCALYPSE NOW and SAVING PRIVATE RYAN have nothing on it.

7. THE BOYS FROM THE BLACKSTUFF (BBC, 1982). Looking back now, it is easy to forget how radical politics was in the early 1980s and the huge social upheavals that went with it. Now we mock Chavs for wearing Burberry, but in an age of full employment you forget what the miners' strike was like. Of course, I grew up in happy, rich, South-East England with parents who read the Daily Telegraph, so the social unrest seemed like distant thunder. I can still remember the visceral impact of seeing THE BOYS FROM THE BLACKSTUFF and the demented chant, "gissa job". Alan Bleasdale's TV drama exposed for the first time on national television the huge social price of so-called modernity. I can't articulate how much of a revelation that series was.

8. BRIDESHEAD REVISITED (ITV, 1981). Of course, I didn't see this till ten years later but it remains for me the quintessial big bucks TV literary adaptation and never to be bettered. Everything about the production is indulgent in the best possible way. Waugh's novel portrays the indulged aristocratic lifestyle and laments its decline. Director Charles Sturridge (who also did a brilliant adaptation of Waugh's brutal A HANDFUL OF DUST) helms a production that spares no expense or attention to detail in bringing the country estate or the Oxford dining club to life. Sir John Mortimer is indulged with thirteen hours of airtime and so can include all the minor characters and the full intricacies of the plot. And the audience is indulged with a stellar cast, including Laurence Olivier as the Byronic Lord Marchmain and Sir John Gielgud in a chilling cameo as Mr. Ryder. I watch the complete BRIDESHEAD REVISITED once a year. It is a story full of tragic love affairs, homosexual, heterosexual, between a man and a way of life, and between people and their faith. It is glorious and shows just how TV can out-do cinema - it can take time. I passionately believe that Alan Moore's THE WATCHMEN can only be brought to the screen SUCCESSFULLY in a similar, lengthy, high-budget, utterly faithful adaptation.

9. TINKER, TAILOR, SOLDIER, SPY (1978, ITV) is another faithful adaptation of a novel that I hold in the highest regard. I saw it in the 1990s at a time when I was reading a lot of Graham Greene, Waugh and John le Carre and I can honestly say that it shaped the way in which I view the world - from politics to love affairs. George Smiley is my hero, and George Smiley will always be, for me, Sir Alec Guinness looking weary but unbowed.

10. SESAME STREET taught me the letters of the alphabet, numbers, how to cross a streeet, that there are lots of people who aren't white too..... Thinking back to all that funky music and cartoon ads for numbers sung by the Pointer Sisters, is it any wonder I grew to believe that Maceo Parker's Elephant Stepped on My Foot was the greatest track ever recorded?

THE THIRD MAN - a personal appreciation

What can I say about THE THIRD MAN that has not already been said by film critics of greater talent over the decades? It's the British film-noir par excellence and was recently named as the best British film ever made by the British Film Institute*. It picked up awards at Cannes and the Oscars on original release and is viewed by most cineastes as a must-have DVD. Just google the title and you'll come up with a wealth of erudite appreciation.

Well, perhaps I can add a point of information. A newly restored print of THE THIRD MAN is doing the rounds of art cinemas in the UK. As the movie was originally released in 1949, this is likely the first chance fans of the movie will have to see it on the big screen. And boy is it worth it. If ever a movie was made for a cinematic release it is THE THIRD MAN, with its Oscar-winning black and white expressionist photography - all sharp contrast and distorted camera angles.

The other thing I can add is a sort of personal appreciation - an explanation of why THE THIRD MAN is important to me. Years before I started hanging out with R.I.A.K.s** on an almost permanent basis, my only mental images of Vienna were those given to me by cinematographer Robert Krasker in THE THIRD MAN. It was the first movie I watched where I actually noticed the deliberate use of the camera, which I guess influenced the fact that I later studied cinematography rather than cinema history or anything more "soft". This was not your usual bland glossy Hollywood flick. Vienna was all shadowy cobblestone streets and filthy sewers, accompanied by that demented repetitive zither music from Anton Karas. When I finally made it to Vienna I was somewhat disappointed to find it was rather Habsburg Disney - all fairy snow or stunning sunshine. Of course, that didn't stop me scaring myself silly on rides at the Prater or taking the Third Man Tour of the Sewers. I did this about an hour before attending the Concordia Ball, much to my more civilised friends' bemusement.

But more importantly, for me THE THIRD MAN was one of the signposts along the way to growing up. By which I mean, the moment at which you stop thinking that James Bond is how spies are and that the world is essentially A-okay. To quote John le Carre: "I despise Bond. I despise the short answer to the perfectly made world." It started off with reading a lot of Graham Greene, who also wrote the script to THE THIRD MAN, because his sort of uncomfortable Catholicism fitted a lot better to my experience than the usual hagiography you're forced to read as a kid. Once you realise that a whisky priest - an alcoholic with a mistress - can be the Good Catholic Hero - all doors are open. And then I started reading John le Carre, mainly because he went to my old college and apparently one of the old tutors there used to recruit for MI5. Both Greene and le Carre write books about the way the world is, not how it might be in some Boys Own Adventure. And both have a great sense of the absurd. Both deal with the clash of ideology and pragmatism and those grey areas of morality. They also both knew Kim Philby, who was allegedly Greene's model for THE THIRD MAN's most famous character, Harry Lime.

Harry Lime, played in an outstanding cameo by Orson Welles, is a racketeer. A man who has no morality but a profit motive. He has made money in post-war Vienna by running goods from one side to the next and is really rather proud of his hard-headed pragmatism. He lays out his life philosophy in an infamous speech at the Prater: "Like the fella says, in Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love - they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock." It's a sort of Satanic argument for meritocracy and the advance of man. Utterly chilling and yet very, very charming.

This is basically what Kim Philby was meant to be like. Kim was one of the "Cambridge Spies" who betrayed British and American secrets to the Russians from the 1930s up until the 50s, was it?, when Philby was caught and shipped off to Moscow. By this point he was very senior in the British secret service. Le Carre's take seems to be that Philby was basically on the make. In an interview, he said: "Philby had an innate disposition to deceive that preceded his Marxism. But his Marxism was a rationalisation, which came later. His deceitful nature derived from.....an over-whelming vanity about his own worth."

What does all this have to do with THE THIRD MAN? Well, for me, THE THIRD MAN is a story of a young man who comes to Vienna, to quote le Carre again, in the spirit of John Buchan and leaves it in the spirit of Kafka. The movie tells us how that happened. The hero of the story is Holly Martins (Joseph Cotton) - a young innocent American writer of pulp fiction. He has been summoned by his old friend Harry Lime with the promise of employment, but he arrives to find Harry dead. Still, he is offered some work as a lecturer so hangs around, probing into the circumstances of his friend's demise. As he pokes around he hears several versions of the event and discovers that there is a Third Man who cannot be accounted for. To cut a long story short - SPOILER - Holly is disabused of his innocence and falls in love with Harry's old girlfriend who is entirely indifferent to him. He also, dramatically, finds that Harry faked his own death to escape the people after him.

Like I said, there are plenty of people who will tell you how great THE THIRD MAN is. They are not wrong, and any chance to see it on the big screen is not to be missed. For me it will always be the quintessential great film about the loss of innocence and about the charismatic nature of amorality. As a young kid of around twelve, this movie mapped out for me what the world was really about. As they say, the devil has all the best lines. Still, again to paraphrase le Carre, I'd rather be Holly's kind of fool, than Harry's.

*The British Film Institute's Top 20 British films list is: 1. The Third Man. 2. Brief Encounter. 3. Lawrence of Arabia. 4. 39 The 39 Steps (Hitckcock's version.) 5. Great Expectations. 6. Kind Hearts and Coronets. 7. Kes. 8. Don't Look Now. 9. The Red Shoes. 10. Trainspotting. 11. The Bridge on the River Kwai. 12. If...13. The Ladykillers. 14. Saturday Night and Sunday Morning. 15. Brighton Rock. 16. Get Carter. 17. The Lavender Hill Mob. 18. Olivier's Henry V. 19. Chariots of Fire. 20. A Matter of Life and Death.

**Random Inter-changeable Austro-Krauts. (A friend of mine wishes a correction to Austro-Struedels. However, RIASs is less catchy.)

THE THIRD MAN originally showed at Cannes 1949 where it won the Grand Prize. It is currently on re-release in the UK in a shiny new print. The old print is available on DVD.

THE IPCRESS FILE - Classic Michael Caine Cold War spy flick

Back in the days before I started bitching about Hollywood biting its own style with a slew of uninspired remakes, legendary producer, Harry Saltzmanm was already in on the act. Saltzman had already created one mega-bucks franchise in the James Bond movies, but, as a shrewd man, he knew that there was some opposition to this glamorous, sexy, gentleman's club view of Cold War espionage. The backlash manifested itself in a number of spy novels that deliberately painted a far more bleak, bureaucratic and fallible picture of British intelligence. Chief among these were the novels of Len Deighton and John le Carre. Saltzman, shrewdly realising that someone would bite his style, did it himself, by shifting the whole Bond production team into producing "alternative" spy thrillers based on the Deighton novels - effectively monopolising British spy franchises and coining in the proverbial phat cash.

Cineastes will tell you how "significant" IPCRESS is. It's the first thriller to feature a hero who (shock! horror!) wears glasses. Worse still, he is a working class guy who gets recruited to spying in a supermarket (!) and never gets to shag hot chicks. Moreover, the whole feel of the movie is more art-house than cineplex. Instead of sleek, luxurious production design, we get the grime and grit of '60s London. The movie is photographed by Otto Heller using off-whack camera angles, distorting lenses and other tricks that serve to undermine the viewer. The hero, Harry Palmer, is definitely not in control in the way that James Bond (in the movies, if not the books) always is.

Granted, THE IPCRESS FILE is significant, but more to the point for the modern viewer, is it entertaining cinema? The answer is a qualified yes. This is a great plot, well shot. Harry Palmer is a retired copper who falls into spying by accident. Top British scientists are getting kidnapped, brainwashed, and then returned and the top brass want to know why and by whom. The story still has great tension and the pacing does not feel too slow to a modern audience. The only slight obstacle is that, while we get great acting from Michael Caine in his break-out performance, this sort of "British hard man" role has become something of a cinematic cliche. With Caine parodying himself in the Austin Powers flicks, it is sometimes hard to take the original seriously. Still, given the lack of decent flicks released this week, you could do a lot worse than check out the movie that inspired a slew of imitators.

THE IPCRESS FILE was originally released in 1965. It is currently on re-release in the UK.

THE CONSTANT GARDENER - Above average political thriller

QUICK REVIEW: Intelligent thriller about a British diplomat who, in investigating the death of his wife, stumbles on a conspiracy by big-pharma to test dangerous drugs on poor Africans.

LONG REVIEW: I should first lay out my stall. I love John le Carre. He is, to my mind, one of the finest novelists of the twentieth century and has extended his analysis of the miserable, unglamorous, morally cloudy, world of Cold War intelligence to the similarly dark underbelly of multi-national corporations. His novel The Constant Gardener, tells the story of a radical young woman called Tessa who marries a low-level diplomat called Justin, based in Nairobi, Kenya. The first scenes show her husband react to the news of her murder. The story then tells, in a combination of flashback and normal narrative, how in investigating her murder he comes to understand his wife and truly fall in love with her.

Rachel Weisz (most famous as the chick from “The Mummy” and one of Hugh Grant’s many squeezes in “About a Boy”) plays Tessa with just the right mixture of good intentions and a slightly annoying gung-ho, selfish attitude. Her character is not meant to be a paragon but a real woman who means well and tries to do right even if using odd tactics. It is refreshing to see such a multi-dimensional portrait brought to the screen. Her husband is played by Ralph Fiennes, who I think is immensely good. His character is a nice, slightly unsure diplomat, unwilling to rock the boat, but fundamentally decent. When faced by matters of global import he does not turn into James Bond, but his integrity carries him through. The penultimate scene of the movie, where he fully comes to terms with his predicament and what his wife’s life was, is outstanding.

The movie also has a decent cast of supporting actors although it is slightly irksome to see the Brit, Pete Postlethwaite, play a South African with an appallingly bad attempt at the accent. Moreover, Danny Huston, a Yank who went to school in the UK, somewhat fumbles his attempt at a Brit accent for the role of the ambassador. However, all this is offset by the scene-stealing performance by Bill Nighy (“Love, Actually”) as the man from Whitehall. His casual cruelty is unnerving precisely because he is so charming. A true villain for the age of bureaucracy.

The movie is directed by Fernando Meirelles, who had such success with “City of God” and is shot with the same saturated colours and crazy hand—held camera-work. I find it a little over-done in this context, and it is worth contrasting his hyper-active video-game style with Michael Haneke’s still, long takes in the more successful thriller, Hidden. But there is no doubt that Meirelles makes Kenya’s northern regions look stunningly beautiful. For that reason, it is worth trying to see this in the big screen rather than on DVD. Overall, while there may be one or two slightly better movies out there – notably Hidden and “A History of Violence”, this movie stands head and shoulders above most of the dross currently showing. I think the rumours of Oscars are over-done, but you could do a lot worse.

THE CONSTANT GARDENER was released in August in the US. It goes on release in the UK on the 11th November, in France on the 28th December, and in Germany on the 12th January 2006.