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The Emissary (1989) More at IMDbPro »


Overview

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3.2/10   24 votes
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Director:
Writer:
Jan Scholtz (writer)
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View company contact information for The Emissary on IMDbPro.
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Loses Intensity During Its Final Episodes. more (1 total)

Cast

  (Cast overview, first billed only)
Ted Le Plat ... Jack Cavanaugh
Terry Norton ... Caroline Cavanaugh

Robert Vaughn ... Ambassador McKay
Patrick Mynhardt ... Brochard

Andre Jacobs ... Hesse (as André Jacobs)
Colin Sutcliffe ... Matthew Holmes
Jonathan Taylor ... Christopher Fry
Hans Strydom ... Justin Latimer
Ken Gampu ... Beamish
Brian O'Shaughnessy ... KGB General
Jannie Wienand ... Cop
Bill Barber ... Bureaucrat
Roland Stafford ... Bureaucrat
Liam O'Brien ... CIA Agent
Roderick Jaftha ... CIA Agent
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Additional Details

Runtime:
USA:98 min
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1 out of 2 people found the following comment useful.
Loses Intensity During Its Final Episodes., 29 February 2008
5/10
Author: rsoonsa (rsoonsa@bandbbooks.com) from Mountain Mesa, California

This South African production, filmed for the most part in Cape Town before that nation was plunged into raw anarchy, offers much for which it may be recommended, including top-flight sound engineering, creative cinematography and able direction, but the script by director Jan Scholtz gradually loses its impact. The work features Terry Norton in her first credited role, and an auspicious performance it surely is, since she is on screen during the majority of the footage as Caroline, wife of a U.S. Assistant Secretary (Ted Leplat) whose diplomatic career is in jeopardy as she is being blackmailed by the KGB, successfully offsetting her every attempt at delivering herself from her imbroglio. Caroline's husband Jack is serving as courier in possession of a computer disc that the U.S.S.R. desperately desires to garner as their possession of it would allow a breach of all American mainframe security caches, and her history of infidelity is employed to force her into obtaining and then delivering the disc to the KGB, while her reluctance to directly involve her husband in the matter plays into the hands of the Soviet intelligence agency. The initial two-thirds of this film are engrossing as the intricate storyline benefits from some good acting, dialogue and camera-work, combining to keep viewers on edge, but Scholtz clearly cannot keep from losing his way so that the conclusive scenes are clichéd and somewhat absurd, undoing what he had achieved. Norton creates her challenging part well and there are good turns also from Andre Jacobs and Patrick Mynhardt as the principal KGB operatives while the sound is faultlessly crafted by Leon Nel; Johan Scheepers and Johan Lategan, respectively, handle their cinematographic and editing responsibilities with polish.

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