A Different Loyalty

This movie has very good acting. The core story line is a good one. The primary reason I gave it only 5 stars like many other people is because the story moves very slowly and is totally repetitious, again and again.

The whole story could have been told in 45 minutes and it could have been a little exciting which the plot calls for but fails to achieve. If you want a nice quiet story to fall asleep to this one fits the bill.

What a disappointment! After watching the film, there is a very good reason that actual names were not used - other than general similarities to circumstance, this is entirely a work of fiction.

Even a fictionalized account (inspired by the McClean story) could have been entertaining if had successfully delivered an historically accurate context (forget accuracy). There could have been a story of complex emotions, motivations and consequences but instead, you get a superficial drama that misses its mark or worse, doesn't even aim at the interesting targets.

This is a true waste of talent for such a great cast.

The DVD packaging describes this movies as a thriller, and as if to underline that, shows a picture of helicopters circling an exploding van while a guy with a gun runs away.

This movie is not a thriller, and there are no explosions or helicopters. (What was that on the packaging? Clip art?) When I'm in the mood for explosions and helicopters, it's a disappointment to bring home a movie that instead has as its big moments someone breaking down a door or fingerprinting someone.

This movie is a rambling, disjointed drama. It wasn't completely awful, but was like real life in that the story doesn't completely make sense and doesn't work artistically. (And if they'd shown one more Casablanca-esquire foggy airfield, I'd have screamed.) It's just a bunch of confusing stuff that happens, and then other stuff happens, and who cares about any of those people? And we spent the first 45 minutes trying to tell the various dark-haired women apart. Or maybe they were all the same woman. Still don't know.

Watching this movie was a very disappointing experience. The premise was good (like with most movies out there), but the execution was just atrocious, and the story was unrealistic at best. For example, the movie shows us that a westerner was allowed to go in and out of Soviet Union, as well as go though streets of Moscow without any surveillance in the midst of cold war!!

Moreover, the actors seemed like they were made out of wood in terms of expressiveness. The story was painfully slow and was heading nowhere, really: nothing changed nor happened though the entire movie...

Funny how our protagonists had a view at the Basilica of Christ the Saviour in early 70s (Destroyed in early 20th century, restored in late 90s by the mayor of Moscow)... This and many other anachronisms give out the fact that the production team didn't even research the subject of their work before filming...

2/10

Weak movie. I would venture to say it reminded me of a low budget B movie. I was bored. The characters were almost lifeless, all except Sharon Stone's character. Even though it was made in 2004/2005, it resembles the production abilities of much earlier decades. Locations don't seem realistic. For example, Beirut was the Paris of the Middle East in the 1960's yet was cast as a backward location in a more backward town (not even a city). The clothes seem like they were of a decade or two earlier. I gave the movie a 5/10 and that may have been generous.