The Little Drummer Girl (1984)

Simple and well acted, it has tension enough to knot the stomach.

The biggest problem with this movie is it’s a little better than you think it might be, which somehow makes it worse. As in, it takes itself a bit too seriously, which makes most of the movie feel kind of dull.

It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

The storyline feels a little thin and moth-eaten in parts but this sequel is plenty of fun.

Scary bad acting by Diane Keaton. Her part is awfully cheesy too. The European and Arab actors are very good. Spoiler - Do they ever reveal why it had to be Diane Keaton who drove the red car to Munich? And how did Keaton go from being slapped around by interrogators to walking out of the London subway?The movie contains nice video of Europe and the Mediterranean countries and the depiction of intelligence techniques is very good.

It's been years since I've seen this movie (or read the book, which I did also), and I'm prompted to say something only because I'm reading a new novel, set in Sarajevo, on roughly the same subject, which brings it all to mind. Quite simply, Diane Keaton (whom I like, sometimes) was abysmally miscast, and since the movie turned around her it hadn't a chance. She was too old, too personally quirky, too American. Charlie is a character whose complexity is that of youthful dumbness mixed with superficial knowingness. There are lot of actresses who could have done it (Natasha Richardson might have been one of them, which would certainly have been interesting), but Keaton wasn't one of them.

Oh, God, this movie was wretched. I saw it once when it first came out, 20 years ago, and still remember how awful it was.Don't worry about spoilers; I have no idea what the storyline was. All I remember is Diane Keaton just whining and wailing her way through the whole 5 hrs (oh, it was only an hour or two? coulda fooled me...). I don't think the writers, director or cast had any inkling of what they were doing or where they were going, and that's probably why Keaton's performance seemed so pointless.Who else was in it? Darned if I know.../r

This 1984 film based on John Le Carre's book could well have been written just a few days ago. The confrontation between Israel and Palestine has not changed over the years although the explosive device chosen in the film happens to be a nasty bomb hidden in a suit case and detonated at a distance. Much of the excitement of the story seems to revolve around the preparation and delivery of the suit cases and the spy and counter spy activities.My reason for choosing this film was to see more of the work of Klaus Kinski (an explosive personality if ever there was one) but in this film he was very much in control. In the role of Kurtz he is responsible for selecting Charlie (Diane Keaton) to spy among the Palestinians. Charlie being a superb actress could handle the job expertly using her feminine charms.The film has a very large cast...too large in fact...and one tends to get lost amongst all the characters trying to remember which are the Israelis and which are the Palestinians.The film literally starts with a bang and the search is on to find the perpetrators. As the tension mounts and the bombs explode, one keeps asking, "Who will be next?"One cannot visualize a happy ending for such a film. While it makes exciting viewing the tragedy is that lives are still being lost each day as the confrontation continues and hopes of peace seem to become even more remote.