This film is one of the few I have seen in the last 10 years that accurately depicts the more day to day activities of what a career in spycraft really is. It is less about drinking single malt and shooting machine guns, and more about making intense personal connections with people that have possibly nothing more in common than a shared ideal or goal. Would a KGB/FSB officer have any reason to befriend a low-level Telecom engineer other than to recruit him as a source? The answer is a resounding no, but makes a perfect cover to conduct the types of interactions that make a successful source / handler relationship work.
The depictions of a hostile intel environment like Moscow in the 1980's where the average foreign national had a two man car team following at all times with guards reporting movements at a gate outside the house were very accurate. The bugging of the house and bedroom, and the reality that this brings to living in front of a camera and live audience at all times for years on end is very real. Yakov Smirnov's old joke of "In Russia you don't watch television, television watch you," is the very reality of even the modern operating environment in the forbidden environments.
(spolier alert) In the beginning of the film, a seasoned gristled KGB colonel conducting a meeting with the untrained Engineer really set the tone for the film. He preferred working with an amateur that was off the radar of the domestic services to a trained professional with a profile and active surveillance team. The amount of time and coordination that goes into a meeting in a hostile environment includes potentially months of planning and days of execution. All of this to pull off a brief meeting or just a passing of documents or money. All of this planning and preparation have their own footprint and limit the longevity of an operation in their own way. Choosing to work with this amateur ensured that the footprint would be dismissible in the beginning, allow rapid multiple meetings, and the cover for action would only erode over time as they made their own operational decisions. This is what would work for exactly the goal of the operation. Short operation with huge results. That and the source seemed to be on a suicide mission. Very accurate.
I read in a previous review that they thought the pace was slow or that this narrative was under-paced. I disagree in that the action was very compressed, but real spy work is only exciting when things go bad. If the meetings are conducted securely, there is little more to see and hear than two colleagues discussing politics and events. Again, very accurate. It only gets exciting near the end, and true to reality, excitement only means things have gone horribly wrong.
The liaison relationship depicted between the french service and the American service was also very interesting. A never ending cat and mouse game in which both parties assume the other is holding something back and reveal information only as it seems inevitable that the other would learn it. I think the depiction of the two executives of France and the US doing this face to face was a little embellished, but the characters were certainly the ones acting on the intel. The other depictions of the liaison relationships and turf battles among domestic and foreign services within the same country were very accurate and probably underplayed in this story.
(Spoiler alert) Finally, the burning of the source in the end by the US was again something that happened (happens) to regularly when the seeming political fallout is larger than the political gain of the intel. This is what really made this such a beautiful character depiction. The fact that the source knew how the varied agencies would let the facts and events unfold. He knew he would be caught, he knew how it would end, and the poem concerning the wolf and the cubs stitched this narrative together in a beautiful way while in no way coming across as ham-handed or forced.
In all an excellent movie.
The depictions of a hostile intel environment like Moscow in the 1980's where the average foreign national had a two man car team following at all times with guards reporting movements at a gate outside the house were very accurate. The bugging of the house and bedroom, and the reality that this brings to living in front of a camera and live audience at all times for years on end is very real. Yakov Smirnov's old joke of "In Russia you don't watch television, television watch you," is the very reality of even the modern operating environment in the forbidden environments.
(spolier alert) In the beginning of the film, a seasoned gristled KGB colonel conducting a meeting with the untrained Engineer really set the tone for the film. He preferred working with an amateur that was off the radar of the domestic services to a trained professional with a profile and active surveillance team. The amount of time and coordination that goes into a meeting in a hostile environment includes potentially months of planning and days of execution. All of this to pull off a brief meeting or just a passing of documents or money. All of this planning and preparation have their own footprint and limit the longevity of an operation in their own way. Choosing to work with this amateur ensured that the footprint would be dismissible in the beginning, allow rapid multiple meetings, and the cover for action would only erode over time as they made their own operational decisions. This is what would work for exactly the goal of the operation. Short operation with huge results. That and the source seemed to be on a suicide mission. Very accurate.
I read in a previous review that they thought the pace was slow or that this narrative was under-paced. I disagree in that the action was very compressed, but real spy work is only exciting when things go bad. If the meetings are conducted securely, there is little more to see and hear than two colleagues discussing politics and events. Again, very accurate. It only gets exciting near the end, and true to reality, excitement only means things have gone horribly wrong.
The liaison relationship depicted between the french service and the American service was also very interesting. A never ending cat and mouse game in which both parties assume the other is holding something back and reveal information only as it seems inevitable that the other would learn it. I think the depiction of the two executives of France and the US doing this face to face was a little embellished, but the characters were certainly the ones acting on the intel. The other depictions of the liaison relationships and turf battles among domestic and foreign services within the same country were very accurate and probably underplayed in this story.
(Spoiler alert) Finally, the burning of the source in the end by the US was again something that happened (happens) to regularly when the seeming political fallout is larger than the political gain of the intel. This is what really made this such a beautiful character depiction. The fact that the source knew how the varied agencies would let the facts and events unfold. He knew he would be caught, he knew how it would end, and the poem concerning the wolf and the cubs stitched this narrative together in a beautiful way while in no way coming across as ham-handed or forced.
In all an excellent movie.