***SPOILERS*** Known as the thinking man's "James Bond" movie has the just released from the brig for stealing booze out of the local army PX former UK Army Sgt. Harry Palmer, Michael Caine, who's recruited by his boss Colonel Ross, Guy Doleman,to find out what's been happening to a number of NATO scientists. It's these brilliant men who suddenly lost their memories as well as minds taking what ever information that they had in scientific as well as military research down the memory hole together with them.
Palmer a master cook, he learned that wile doing KP in the British Army, and food & wine expert is told by his bosses in British intelligence to go undercover and find out what happened to the scientists in there suddenly losing their minds. That's in order to keep Plamer's handlers' hands from getting dirty or being , like Palmer, exposed and possibly assented. Palmer does crack the case he's on by deciphering this so-called "Ipcress File" that involves brainwashing the top western scientists and making them useless in their ability to think straight. Palmer himself is later kidnapped and tortured by the master mind of this weird operation communist Albanian Eric Ashly Grantby-Code name "Bluejay"-who uses torture to make Palmer forget who he is and who he's working for. "Bluejay" is planning to turn him into a helpless zombie as well as mind controlled assassin for, I suppose, the Soviet Union's KGB.
***SPOILERS***Dark and stark looking film with a minimum of light-even in total daylight-"The Ipcress File" was soon to become the standard intelligent spy film that all others following it are to be compared to. It shows just how dangerous the spy game really is unlike the many "James Bond" real or imitated movies where in it our hero Harry Plamer is just a regular guy or just plain Joe not a superman without all kinds of gadgets to get him out of danger as well as beautiful women in every scene that he's in. It also has the villains in the film being not as powerful as in the "Bond" movies and not running an entire shadowy and secret organization that Palmer is confronted with that makes the movie a lot more believable.
Palmer a master cook, he learned that wile doing KP in the British Army, and food & wine expert is told by his bosses in British intelligence to go undercover and find out what happened to the scientists in there suddenly losing their minds. That's in order to keep Plamer's handlers' hands from getting dirty or being , like Palmer, exposed and possibly assented. Palmer does crack the case he's on by deciphering this so-called "Ipcress File" that involves brainwashing the top western scientists and making them useless in their ability to think straight. Palmer himself is later kidnapped and tortured by the master mind of this weird operation communist Albanian Eric Ashly Grantby-Code name "Bluejay"-who uses torture to make Palmer forget who he is and who he's working for. "Bluejay" is planning to turn him into a helpless zombie as well as mind controlled assassin for, I suppose, the Soviet Union's KGB.
***SPOILERS***Dark and stark looking film with a minimum of light-even in total daylight-"The Ipcress File" was soon to become the standard intelligent spy film that all others following it are to be compared to. It shows just how dangerous the spy game really is unlike the many "James Bond" real or imitated movies where in it our hero Harry Plamer is just a regular guy or just plain Joe not a superman without all kinds of gadgets to get him out of danger as well as beautiful women in every scene that he's in. It also has the villains in the film being not as powerful as in the "Bond" movies and not running an entire shadowy and secret organization that Palmer is confronted with that makes the movie a lot more believable.