After two old friends accidentally meet and resolve to become investigators for hire, they quickly become embroiled in a missing treaty and a Bolshevik conspiracy.After two old friends accidentally meet and resolve to become investigators for hire, they quickly become embroiled in a missing treaty and a Bolshevik conspiracy.After two old friends accidentally meet and resolve to become investigators for hire, they quickly become embroiled in a missing treaty and a Bolshevik conspiracy.
Storyline
Did you know
- TriviaThis film is very accurate in comparison to the book.
- GoofsIn the final dinner scene, a fly lands on Julius Hersheimmer's hand.
- Quotes
Tuppence Cowley: Two young adventurers for hire... willing to do anything, go anywhere... Pay must be good, no reasonable offer refused.
Tommy Beresford: I should think that any offer we got to that would be pretty unreasonable one.
Tuppence Cowley: Tommy, you're a genius. That's much more chic: no unreasonable offer refused.
- ConnectionsFollows Partners in Crime (1983)
It's a decent but flawed film that will probably be enjoyed most by hardcore Christie fans. One main flaw is that the story is too complicated for its own good--probably the result of trying to translate a novel to a two-hour film. There are just too many characters, too many threads, and occasionally, too little explanation of characters and threads.
One major problem here is the core of the plot--maybe I'm just lacking some knowledge from the real world that I need to understand it, but the plot hinges on a political document that if found, is predicted (with little lack of certainty) to bring about a complete revolution/overthrow of England. It is never explained why this would be or how anyone could be so certain of it, and I sure couldn't deduce or intuit it from the information given. I was also confused about the implied ethics of the situation--the document seemed to be authentic, yet the "good guys" seemed to want to get it so that they could keep it a secret, so effectively, it is sanctioning the "good guys" lying about some piece of history. Maybe the document was supposed to be more like a Hitchcockian MacGuffin, but if so, it seemed like too many details were given (as well as left out).
On the other hand, it didn't help that I'm a bit hard of hearing, that I have an even more difficult time making out English spoken with accents different than mine, and that this DVD didn't have subtitles. But I could pick up most of the dialogue, and I was still occasionally confused about who someone was and why our chief characters were going where they were going and doing what they were doing. Some cuts and scene transitions were very rough dramatically, so that didn't help, either, and the pacing gets a bit draggy at times.
The other primary flaw comes with some of the performances, especially Gavan O'Herlihy, playing an American, Julius P. Hersheimmer. He is fairly awkward throughout, and he's an important character. It kills too many scenes. The stars, James Warwick and Francesca Annis, as Tommy and Tuppence, respectively, are much better--enough that I'm looking forward to seeing the rest of the series, which I'm also predicting might not be so overcomplicated and underexplained because of being written for a shorter television slot.
- BrandtSponseller
- Jul 30, 2006
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- Agatha Christie's 'The Secret Adversary'
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