Friday, 10 February 2017
The Little Drummer Girl (1984)
The Little Drummer Girl (1984) - Directed by George Roy Hill. Diane Keaton plays Charlotte Cornwell off Rock Follies, sort of, as the character in the original book (by John LeCarre aka Cornwell's brother David). Watch out for a young Bill Nighy playing a jobbing actor alongside Fred Elliot's bigamist wife from Coronation Street. Diane plays a British-based American actress (presumably, she's done a Tales of the Unexpected) who goes to Greece for a job, gets caught up with Greek-Israeli Joseph (played by Yorgo Voyagis, best known for his role in Jesus of Nazareth where he was... Joseph) via a staged wine commercial. Klaus Kinski plays an Istaeli spymaster/nutter (it's Kinski, he's always nuts because he was more than nuts in real life) who employs among his men one of the kids from Lemon Popsicle. It gets rather slow and becomes more of a romance. David Suchet appears in his Middle Eastern mode. We get to see 1980s Fulham, including a "P*ki shop" run by Albert Moses from Mind Your Language in a flat cap and Leisure Video (which presumably like every good 80s video shop has An American Werewolf in London, Annie Hall, Lemon Popsicle and plenty of Kinski's oeuvre in stock). Le Carre himself turns up as a copper, and tonally, it's asll over the place - it ever so often feels like it will go into action-thriller mode and then dives into slushy romance. Yes, I know it's LeCarre not Jack Higgins, but LeCarre doesn't really work when it's not about middle-aged blokes challenging each other and talking in riddles.
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