I am one of those sad individuals who lives the life of a spy in my head, so when I go out I tailor the environment I am in to my internal spy narration. I would like to point out that I am not one of those people who mumble to themselves or give an out loud commentary as I do things, and on the weekend, I felt like a villains henchman. I went out with some friends to one of those hidden exclusive bars in the city, where I drank some very nice cocktails, before we moved on to the high-rollers club of the local casino, where individual gamblers dropped thousands per turn of the cards. I watched the gamblers disinterest as they won and lost huge amounts and I did feel bad as I thought with all that money of all the good they could do, yet I admittedly was thinking that as I ate my free food whilst gulping down my free vodka and cokes. To complete the night we went to one of the “high-class” gentlemens club, where we were ushered in as VIPs as my mates mate (a huge fat drunk guy, but stinking rich) girlfriend was performing. She is a Penthouse Pet, so it warms the heart to see love not just based on looks. This was turning out to be a very different night from my normal night out.

As I looked around the club, from my high moral pedestal mind you, I equated the sad losers next to the stage as Bond fans. Eh? I hear you cry! Well the girl walking down on two legs or on all fours, is expected and has an arrogance about her, she knows she is in charge and there are no real surprises, no real emotion, and has a half decent soundtrack just like Bond. There is no emotional connection, rather she has a role to play and will get a big fat cheque at the end of the night. She has her own marketing as the issue of Penthouse where she is on the front cover is left on a few tables so that we know who she is and that it is a supposedly privilege to see her. Bond has an arrogance about him, there is no real suspense in a Bond movie, at no point do you think that he might die, rather all the lead actors are going through the motions in order to earn the big fat pay cheque whilst the producers use the movie as a vehicle to product place anything and everything. As I am scanning the room, looking like a bad undercover cop or a lost little bored boy, I am thinking of A Dandy in Aspic, on how to write the post, when one of the hostesses comes up to talk to me.

My conversation with the very nice looking 20 year old hostess was:

She: “Hi gorgeous”
Me: “Sorry, what?”
“I said “Hi gorgeous” ”
“Oh, sorry! Hi to you too, sorry I can’t hear you as I have a cold and the music is so loud” At this point my brain is screaming at me to keep it friendly, but say no to spending money as I nearly had to take out a small loan to buy a beer here.
She said something, god knows what it was so I replied
“Sorry, what was that again?”
Some more things she says but I can’t hear over the music, but was I truly making the effort to listen properly? Or was I using all my efforts trying to look non-perverted, even though I’m in a club, how to reject her requests for a drink or even worse a very expensive private dance, so I said to her “Sorry, I can’t hear you, you have a nice night” and she says “You too gorgeous, maybe see you later” before she sashes away. At this point, I’m still thinking I’m looking cool, but I’m sure I looked relieved, but my brain is telling me well done on saving some money – how would you explain having a credit card charge from here, and also I will have to tell my wife this story when I get home which when I do, she is obviously impressed in how I reject this brazen harlots approach, but this impressiveness is hidden beneath her laughing at my social awkward panic attack. I am clearly no Robert Hanssen, I won’t be saving a Miss Ohio Stripper of the Year or writing laughably bad porn like he did.

So panic attack over, my brain returns to the movie and as it does I start thinking that the Harry Palmer films are represented by the non-penthouse strippers – why are they called strippers when they have next to nothing to take off. Palmer is like these strippers, more workman like than the Pet, but still with a certain level of looks and flexibility, and like the Pet, there is a lack of emotion that connects the performance to the audience. Palmer is suave, cool, has an arrogance about him, but you know he too, like Bond, will survive.

Palmer and Bond are clearly not the ugly ducklings of the stage, and this is where A Dandy is Aspic comes in. This movie is the not so ugly girl who can only serve drinks, still good looking but not good enough to make men swoon. Rather she may have confidence issues as she knows she is third tier in an environment where looks not personality or brains is the only criteria and this is reflected in her walk. A high-level stripper has an arrogance as she prowls her territory where a drinks girls scurries about bringing drink orders to the sad men who wont give them a glance. A Dandy in Aspic is all about confidence, self mortality and how a spy works rather than someone who swans through their operational life.

The opening credits, represented by the puppet getting pulled every which way by the East and the West, who are represented by the colours of the background, gives us a stylish clue of which sort of film it will be. It will be a film of mixed loyalties and that agents are, without labouring the point, just puppets on a string and thus expendable and there to be exploited. The puppetry is further used in the end credits too, and you feel that whoever was responsible for the credits has actually made a good job of mirroring the story, rather than just sticking on opening credits which make no sense or relevance to the movie. Take a hint Bond credit producers.

The movie opens in an English countryside church where a man is being buried. A poor attendance, and those who are attending look officious and dressed in a black and you know they are there to bury a spy. A black man hurries off to use his car phone and inform London that the man has been buried. At this point, I did question whether this man is an accurate representation of the Secret Service as he would need to be pretty important to have a car-phone and what looks like a secretary in his expensive looking car. I am solely basing on this on the fact that in those days I would think MI5 and MI6 management would have been strictly male and white, with them becoming more ethically diverse in the late 70s, 80s, rather than 1968 when this film was released.

We are introduced to the main character, Alexander Eberlin, who is actually Krasnevin a KGB assassin. Eberlin is like Molotin or Colonel Maxim Maximovich Isayev, a Russian who has managed to pass himself as a local and infiltrated the local Security establishment, in this case British Intelligence. By appearing to be a “sexless” “arrogant” or easily bored with the world man, like myself in a strip club, he is conveys to the outside world to be your stiff upper-lip Englishman and thus unflappable. However inside he is tired of his false charade, cracks are starting to appear in the Russian support organisation around him and he is yearning to go home.

Eberlin is very much a man who does not know who he is, and so he sub-consciously starts the process of professional suicide by picking up a party girl, Caroline, played by Mia Farrow. During the introduction of this character we find out that she took a picture of him in Morocco, whilst he was there on an assassination mission, and he and the viewer begins to think she is a plant by the SIS in trap him into confessing that he is not who he appears to be. Caroline says she could be a model, but I was left thinking maybe as a sexless plain looking woman who looks like a little boy type of model.

Eberlin then watches a Russian agent getting killed in London, though he could have stopped it, rather he professionally lets the man escape to his death and decides he has enough of London, its climate and wants to go home. His best friend, his local controller has became a junkie, and he too needs to escape back to the Rodina. So Eberlin requests to go home, but he is rejected by his bosses. Despondently he is then tasked by the British to find out who is Krasnevin and is teamed up with Gatiss. This tasking to Eberlin sends him into an internal panic attack, but externally maintains his facade of coolness. The viewer will either like or hate how this panic attack representation is done – I liked it, as how else can you show an internal panic attack where you go red, your ears pound, you go deaf and you want to take flight but your brain shuts down, immobilizing your limbs but your face surprisingly looks the same.

Gatiss is a young man looking to make a name for himself and wanting to turn the Cold War into a full on agent war. Eberlin later wonderfully describes Gatiss as “You [Gatiss] haven’t got an ounce of understanding or emotion in your body. You died the moment you were born. And when your heart finally stops beating, it’ll be a mere formality.”

Eberlin flies to Berlin, and upon arriving tries to defect to the East, however the East Germans refuse him entry and upon his rejection he bumps into Caroline who too has just been refused entry at the same border crossing. They hook up, and it being a spy film you now take it for being granted that she is definitely working for the British. However, I wont write much more about her as she doesn’t add much to the story, she is there simply as a bit of eye-candy, it was simply a coincidence she meets Eberlin and I think Eberlin knows that the end is near, so why not indulge himself and let some feelings show.

Gatiss in Berlin is probing looking for the Krasnevin the hitman, and is getting frustrated with Eberlin for his laissez-faire attitude in trying to find him, so Gatiss turns to the only way he knows how to try and flush Krasnevin out. That is to be a hot headed nuisance, create chaos and up the ante in Berlin with deaths of the Russians and hope that the KGB tasked Krasnevin to kill him. Gatiss, to flush out Kranevin, creates a distraction at the motor racing, which effective as it was the distraction seemed to be well over the top.

I wont go much into the rest of the story, as really it is your job, based on my strong recommendation to go out and watch this film. I hate reading reviews where the reviewer takes you through each line and nuance of the movie, I don’t mind it if it is a movie which is hard to find, but for one that is readily available why should I spoil this for you? However, I though the ending made sense as it puts an end to any aberrations of the rules of an intelligence war, where targeting each others agents is not allowed.

This is a sort of film where if you want entertainment, you will be disappointed, if you want to remove your brain and have everything explained to you, you will be disappointed. Instead, if you enjoy spies real and fictional, the psychological pressures of hiding behind a mask for years and feeling everyone is out to get you, then send the kids and your partner to bed, have a good glass of red and simply enjoy this masterpiece.

Truly this is one of the greatest spy movie of all time. This movie is so good that it makes the Harry Palmer films look like your average journeyman spy films. It strips further away the glamour of spies and instead shows that they are fragile and acutely aware of their mortality.

Fantastic.

The Stasi has never actually seen the whole of Platoon or Apocalypse Now or Full Metal Jacket and gave up after the first 10 mins of Heaven and Earth and so we decided to do a review on a film that is a bit left-field but still about the Vietnam War. This is a short film by Ola Paulakoski and the entire film can be viewed at the bottom of this post. The movie claims to be the only Vietnam movie shot in Sweden and the first, and only Vietnam war/werewolf movie ever made, and all was made for $US2,000.

The story is an ex-CIA agent has become a werewolf and is now running amok during the Vietnam war and the narrator is recounting the story of what happened and how it was killed at the end. The problem sometime when it’s a narration, you know the person must have survived so that he can tell the story so they is no twist. Where in The Sixth Sense it was so obvious he was dead at the start, and I felt a fool waiting for the twist that everybody said would blow your mind when you already assumed him being dead was part of the story at the start, but hey I’m a genius, yet I did like the Keyser Söze twist from the Usual Suspects. In a 20 minute film, you don’t expect to have too much of a detailed story, you want something to happen straight away and that it makes sense and it flows kinda straightforward. An example of Cold War literature which would make a great 20 minute film is Twinkle Twinkle Little Spy by Len Deighton as that is a very short and simple book and things happen one after the other and there is no hidden meanings or sub-plots in the book.

When a films budget is only $2k you don’t expect much and you therefore accept this will be reflected in the costumes (blokes in t-shirts running about with a helmet on), the classified report is just a pad of lined A4 paper and some of the acting is below par, however you are willing to forgive all that. The language in the film doesn’t sit right and Maddocks, the narrator, shouldn’t be in the War as he can’t use his gun and fights rather poorly. However, he being the hero does have the phenomenon which is what I term “The Rocky Punch” in his arsenal. This punch features in most action films where the bad guy is absolutely kicking the living daylights out of the hero, when suddenly the hero throws a lucky punch, which stuns the bad guy, gives the hero new hope and the music starts and you know the battle is going his way now. Maddocks pulls out the punch and knife in his fight with the werewolf after he has internal trouble using his gun and thinks maybe it’s better if he goes the kung-fu fighting style rather than filling a beast of the dark with lead. There are other characters in the movie which are no more believable, Turner who is a gun toting cliché who sacrifices it all for the team and the fat kid from the Fat Boy Slim Album cover who is wearing a badly painted helmet.

I have to be honest and say I’ve never watched a whole horror movie, I exclude teen-wolf and its sequels from that, however this wasn’t really a horror movie as it felt like you were watching at times a movie you find during a computer game. I wont write much more as it will take you longer to read this post than actually watch the film so in conclusion, the film is a bit rubbish, but thoroughly enjoyable.

Major Valeri Petrofsky (Pierce Brosnan) under the orders from the KGB Chairman is sent to the UK on a top secret mission to detonate a small nuclear bomb at an American airbase. This will then trigger the collapse of NATO. John Preston (Michael Caine) who happens to be a great agent but massive problems with authority (think Burnside from Sandbaggers but with more charm) gets re-assigned to a meaningless job through bureaucratic revenge. However, this meaningless job puts him on the trail of Petrofsky, now under the alias of James Ross, living next to the American airbase and who is trying to assemble the bomb from various couriers.
There is also a sub-plot where General Karpov, number 2 in the KGB, is trying to find out what the secret mission is and whether he can use it to become KGB Chairman himself.

Overall:
According to the movie, who would win the cold war: Maybe the Russians as it looked so easy to import a nuclear bomb into the UK, and if it wasn’t for super spy John Preston they would have succeeded. The KGB also seemed to have the ability to churn out agents who would blend into Britain, even if this one appeared to be a peeping tom with the immature sex drive of a teenager and who also struggled with the local idioms. The British are smart as they realise that sometimes they have to make deals with the Russians to protect their own interests. The USA in this movie have planes but they are serviced by rednecks and have a bunch of hippy protesters at the gates telling them how unpopular they are so no real threat there.

Explosives/fight scenes etc.. : Only Russians were killed as the KGB Chairman made sure that his plan was kept secret. Kim Philby, an architect of the plan was killed at the start, the KGBs Chairmans aide-de-camp gets whacked by Petrofsky, Russian sailor is hit by a truck in Glasgow, Soviet bombmaker Irina Vassilievna who is pretending to be Petroskys wife gets killed by her ‘husband’ and then the SAS storm Petroskys house.

Believability of the goodies (UK): John Preston is your common maverick that appears in these movies, super spy, got a sponsor higher up that recognises his brilliance and who therefore uses Preston as a bird dog, whilst Preston’s immediate superior who is more interested in the internal bureaucratic warfare doesn’t appreciate the attitude of Preston. Is Michael Caine the greatest spy actor in the world, yes, but this isn’t his finest work. Its nowhere near the highs of the first two Harry Palmer movies, yet not as bad as the last 2 Harry Palmer movies.
Sir Ian Irvine, played by Ian Richardson is believable, but then anything that Ian Richardson does is believable. Ian Richardson to me epitomises what a cold hearted emotionless power hungry person looks like which is why he becomes the boss of MI5.
Preston’s backup team at the start of the film was a nice touch as it used what was ordinary looking folk to follow a suspected traitor and it showed that members of the secret services are ordinary people and not tuxedo wearing super sleuths.

Believability of the baddies (KGB): Valeri Petrofsky was a cold blooded killer, yet he appeared to by sexually immature to balance this off but then he was from 1980s Russia where the sexual revolution may not have happened, so lets assume that he is believable. Bronsons character in the Tailor of Panama seems to be a slightly grown up but British version of this character and a lot less believable.
General Govershin, Chairman of the KGB, is an evil plotting mastermind who seeks to double cross everyone and explode a nuclear bomb, so yes in this fictional Cold War he certainly is true to form.
Borisov, who runs the KGB finishing school that Petrofsky graduated from, is played by Ned Beatty. No offence to Mr Beatty but he looks like a Russian who likes a drink so believable in looks, but not too sure whether his character would question/complain about orders from the KGB to take his graduates and put them into field work.
General Karpov became Chairman of the KGB, but I’m not too sure that his positioning and the tactics he employed to help the British should have went unnoticed. If I was Chairman of the KGB, which admittedly would be great, I would have wondered why my number two seemed to disappear off the grid for awhile and done something about it. So no, I don’t believe in the character Karpov.

In summary, well worth another watch if you need a Cold War movie fix.

I was excited when this came out in the cinema as I thought the comic book/graphic novel was ok. I’ve tried watching this movie so many times, but I just can’t get into it as I’m constantly looking for excuses to get distracted. The opening credits was nice, then skip, skip, skip, skip, skip, end credits. I do love complex movies, with hidden meanings and a story line that moves gradually along, but this maybe tried to be too clever for its own good. Maybe it tried to please mass market and cult followers and in the end it just got lost?

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and V for Vendetta were far better.

Its cheesy with an extra slice of cheese on top, it’s improbable, its classic 1980s red under the bed with bad hairstyles, it doesn’t really make sense, this movie is so bad yet so good.
A crack team of Cuban and Russian paratroopers invade a small town in Colorado America, as part of the general invasion of the USA. Some high school kids, led by the schools quarterback, Partrick Swayze, and his brother Charlie Sheen, high-tail it to the mountains and began a guerilla warfare. They name themselves the Wolverines, after the school mascot, pick up Jennifer Grey and Lea Thompson, and get help before his noble sacrifice from Powers Booth, blah blah blah blah all top drawer 1980s stuff. Think the goonies meet rambo. There is no need to explain the rest of the story as really who cares, this movie is a good waste of an hour and a half.

I liked how the movie allowed the Communists to introduce a Re-Education camp, where the brothers father screams “Avenge me, avenge me” and the Soviet-American friendship centre which gets blown up. What was also well done was that there was lots of explosions and this movie never tried to introduce too much the Americans as having the moral high ground, instead it was remove your brain slug-fest time.

The Cuban Colonel who speaks a very slow Spanish, as if he has never spoken Spanish before, begins to admire the Wolverines as it reminds him of his days as a guerilla and this culminates at the end with the obligatory mano a mano (or guerilla a guerilla) salute that he shares with Patrick Swayze. Throw in some bearded Russians add some teenage high fives with lots of explosions and a Soviet Invasion force who were part Laurel and Hardy and you get a very good Cold War film.
Overall:
According to the movie, who would win the cold war: The Russians, they have taken Europe apart from the UK which is on its last legs, some of China has been nuked and the Cubans seems to be a Regional Superpower. The movie ending doesn’t clarify how far back the US managed to regain its territory.
Explosives/fight scenes etc.. : Constant, everything went boom, there was plenty of slapstick shooting from RPGs, machine guns, Soviet gunships and even bows and arrows.
Believability of the goodies (USA): Teenage high school kids defeat crack professional Russian and Cuban army.
Believability of the baddies (Soviet): See goodies comment above.

I realise that movie purists/ latte drinking art buffs will find numerous faults with this, but this isn’t a work of art and it doesn’t try to be. If I had to pick between Red Dawn and The Godfather for a plane trip, I would choose this every-time.


Or can you think of a better double pack as this one below?