Cambridge Spies
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Movie Reviews of Cambridge Spies
Movie Review: Entertaining, interesting but not as good as it could have been
Summary: 3 Stars
This is an entertaining account of the Cambridge Ring of spies recruited by the Soviets in the 1930s.
It struck me as a set of semi-fictional vignettes to tell a true story.
This sort of thing always disappoints me. To me, the story is fascinating enough without embellishment or alteration.
It's worth seeing as a piece of entertainment, but not to be taken too seriously.
For those historically minded, the bonus disk with documentaries and some actual footage of the real spies is useful, but again a little disappointing.
It has a couple of interesting clips, but could have been more thorough. It could have, for example, included the entire press conference when Philby denied being the 'Third Man'. Instead, you get a 5 second grab. I'm not sure if the 1956 press conferencce with Burgess and MacLean was filmed, but Burgess' film with Tom Driberg in Moscow was not included in its entirety. Again, only a 5 second grab. Anthoy Blunt's 1979 interview is very interesting, but constitutes the only extended interview of the package.
Movie Review: Missed Opportunity
Summary: 3 Stars
The true story of the Cambridge spies is a fascinating chapter in the history of espionage but it is also a study in the English class system. Four upper class idealists who were rather ignorant about the system they were spying for whilst betraying the system that allowed them wealth and opportunity out of reach of the common man.This dramatization is too detailed on romance and does not focus on the real events enough. The amazing aspect is that they got away with it for so long but there should have been more explananation of the changing world events to illustrate this. The motivation of the four is never clear and the damage they caused is never explained.
If you like English dramas, you will probably like this. But for me far too much time is dedicated to the love affairs of the group and even though you would expect a true story about espionage during world war II and the cold war would be thrilling and exhilarating this is rather dull and boring. Good acting, good direction but a bit too much soft focus.
Movie Review: How to turn traitors into nice guys
Summary: 2 Stars
This is a terrific film, full of wonderful acting and carefully recreated sets and costumes (with the possible exception of the Guernica sequence which shows antiquated German aircraft). Having said so, I must take exception to the almost totally biased presentation of the criminal activities of the main characters. There is very little in this series to indicate the true nature of Stalinism - its genocidal character, its show trials, public terror, the hell of the Gulag, etc., etc. In short, Stalinism was not better than fascism, and the excuse of serving the former in order to fight the latter is utterly ludicrous. Fortunately, the four traitors finally got their just desserts by having to live their final years in the Soviet "paradise" but the artistic value of the film is seriously marred by its propagandistic message.Movie Review: BBCCCP Shows Its Communist Sympathies
Summary: 1 Stars
I expected the BBC to skew the history of the Cambridge spies towards something romantically favorable to communist terror and butchery, but this one really went "over the top" as the Brits say. Casting aside all historical fact, save for their names and little else, the BBC production mis-cast these four craven young men, filled with hatred for their homeland, as idealists seeking to help the Soviet communist utopia, out of the goodness of their hearts -- "for the sake of starving children", etc. By their words, Britain and America are described as decadent, money-grubbing capitalist, Nazi-craving hell-states, bound by insuperable class-barriers and homophobia. Not a chance is missed to show these guys as idealist heroes, fighting for the greater good, and the hated society upon which they parasitically thrived as something wicked and nasty. The impression is very clear also, this is not merely the opinions of the spy-boys, but of the BBC producers who give plenty of examples to validate those same negative impressions. Nothing is presented to counter such a skewed and false vision, and the producers seemed to aim for a rehabilitation of the spy-boys, with a simultaneous villification of Western democracy.
Of course, the BBC is well-known today for doing exactly the same thing on its "news" reporting also -- use of selective reporting and lies of omission, praising, or at minimum "understanding" Islamic terror bombers by embracing jihadi propaganda and revisionist history, if not outright Jew-hatred, while blaming their dead victims for what happened to them. Those who view the BBC broadcasts in the USA won't get the "full monty", as their international branches is where the most propagandist anti-freedom and pro-fascist sermons are delivered. This mini-series lives down to that "new BBC" tradition. It also seemed aimed at pushing homoerotic bedroom scenes into the livingrooms of ordinary BBC viewers, with the first segment being particularly rich in this measure. No comparable heterosexual scenes appeared, even though two of the Cambridge spy-boys were claimed straight. It is not a particularly complimentary view of the gay condition either, with Burgess chronically soliciting anonymous sex from public bathrooms, getting drunk and acting provocatively, unzipping his pants in the face of a fellow worker's shocked wife in one scene. Was this all really relevant? Perhaps, as an added factor of their hatred, of Blunt and Burgess, at least, towards Western heterosexual society. Communism alone would suffice, however. BBC doesn't touch those meaty topics, however, of their hatred of ordinary decent hard-working British and Americans, even when showing them willfully transmitting atomic bomb construction details to the Soviets.
To say that the Cambridge spies were idealistically ignorant of the butchery of Stalinism is the most profound Lie in the whole business. No communist living outside of Antarctica could claim such ignorance much after the 1930s, especially with the Hitler-Stalin Pact and the subsequent invasion of Poland by the Nazis and Soviets (funny how most left-wing histories never mention the inconvenient fact that the Soviets also invaded Poland a few days after Hitler's whermacht, making sure to get their half of the Polish pie). Too much BBC script-writing time was devoted to showing the spy-boys hand-wringing, lip-biting and anxiously furrowing their brows about the Hitler-Stalin Pact, when in reality they happily took their marching orders from Moscow without hesitation, and we know well how the left-wing idiots of those days went about "explaining" to everyone how the "devil Hitler" suddenly became a devoted Socialist, something which only the genius Stalin knew about (actually some have made a good argument Hitler was indeed a socialst, but I digress...). Every decent Marxist or communist was out of the game by that time, writing their mea culpas and coming over fully to the center-point of Western democracy, as with George Orwell. When the central characters are not smooching it up with each other, hugging in forced-crocodile tears when one of their ilk gets into trouble (but narry a tear for the hundreds they sent to early graves), then the film treats the viewer to angry or drunken ranting speeches by the characters, denouncing Western democratic society. This is more than just "character portrayal" but is a "message from the BBC producers".
Virtually everyone who is not a communist spy is either (take your pick): 1) a low-class idiot, 2) a filty capitalist pig, 3) a Nazi-enthusiast, 4) a homophobe, or 5) an upper-class idiot, wallowing in inherited money, who is happy when poor children are starving to death. Oh, and Americans, we are racists and atomic-bombing religious fanatics also, on top of all else. Did I miss anything? The summary statement of the BBC producers, and probably authentically of the Cambridge spy-boys as well, was the scene when Guy Burgess drives his car through the front yards of a half-dozen ordinary American homes, smashing everything and then giving a speech from the roof of his car, denouncing their contemptible "picket fences" and "capitalism" and so forth. Everyone is denounced as a member of the Ku Klux Klan (which for all its grim theatre and murdering, never killed so many innocents in a hundred years as Comrade Lenin did in one, or Comrade Stalin did in one good day), or worse, and so on. On that scene, one got a very real sense of authentic emotion in the production. One can only hope the average decent viewer will come away thinking that communists are drunken and revolting treacherous parasites.
The only decent thing in this production was a separate History Channel item which gives a factual overview of the Cambridge spies, and thereby not surprisingly conflicts with much of the BBC production. Another documentary section provides old news footage of Blunt "explaining" why he did what he did -- but of course, not one interview with anyone who goes down a list showing the damage they did to the West, nor how many lives were lost, those who were directly murdered because of these "spy-boys". Once again, the BBC shows it is more loving of Red Fascist causes than of Western freedoms, and will happily turn such miserable Red-fanatics into "misunderstood idealists", no matter what the body-count.
Movie Review: Headline: American TV infects the BBC!
Summary: 1 Stars
The BBC has a long and honorable tradition of producing and airing fine dramas. "Cambridge Spies" doesn't continue that tradition. On the contrary, it looks exactly what it is: a made-for-TV movie that takes a bad script, uninspired acting, and a low budget and makes from all of that a predictably awful film. Instead of watching a BBC production, you'd swear you were watching something made for one of the American networks.
Why is "Cambridge Spies" so bad? It's not because the film is pretty unhistorical. I've never understood those people who complain that fictional works about historical events aren't more "accurate." Surely no one watches historical drama for a history lesson (at least they shouldn't).
What makes the film so deadly is, first of all, terrible writing. The script is full of sentimental one-liners, and seems utterly incapable of nuance or gradation (for example, the character McLean meets his future wife--horribly played by a no-talented Jenna Harrison--and woos, beds, marries, and rescues her from the Nazis in all of 5 minutes). Sadly, the script got worse as the 4-part series progressed.
The poor quality of the script may account for the leaden acting displayed by virtually everyone in the film. But one senses that a great deal of the film's flatness must be chalked up to untalented actors. The above-mentioned Harrison is so utterly awful that watching her is embarrassing. Tom Hollander as Guy Burgess has some very good moments, particularly in the first part of the series, but his portrayal becomes predictable and tedious (lots of shouting and histrionics). Samuel West as Anthony Blount plays a character so tightly wound that he's in chronic danger of becoming unhinged. But West's handling of the character reduces Blount to a rather sissified, simpering worry-wart. Rupert Penry-Jones and Toby Stephens as Philby and McLean don't bear mentioning. Both of them seem to have but one facial expression in their acting repertoir, and that a hangdog look of dejected worry.
All in all, a film to miss.