Spy Games

I went into watching the film with no expectations, and found that it actually wasn't that bad. The film is choppy and inconsistent, but there's lots of little clever touches and running gags. The actors veer in and out of character and the director seemingly couldn't decide if he was making a light-hearted espionage flick or a sharp black comedy, but it's still fun to notice and pick apart the subtle asides and sight gags. Not the greatest movie of all time, but an amusing way to spend an hour and a half.

I know this film from the title "Spy Games."

It is one of those man versus woman films, that also is West (American) versus East (Russian) and has the familiar James Bond-type scenario in which spies working on opposite sides are still lovers at the same time.

Bill Pullman and Irene Jacob play those two roles. It was shocking to see full frontal nudity on Jacob not once but several times. Yes, "history was made at night" if you were with her!

Pullman was okay but nothing special in his role. Actually, I had a hard time believing his role. The same goes for the movie in general: okay, but nothing so involving that you can't put it down. The premise was more interesting than what was delivered.

He's an American spy, she's a Russian spy, they're both in Helsinki spying on each other and sleeping together. They both know that, things being what they are in the 90s, they're probably not as relevant as they once were. They both have superiors who take things slightly more seriously than they do. Sounds like a good premise, and the film certainly had it's funny moments. I saw it at the Toronto Film Festival last week. The audience enjoyed it. Lots of laughs. I liked it. There are worse ways to spend two hours.

The Cold War is over and two adversarial spies (Bill Pullman and Irene Jacob) fall in love and dream of living a normal life. There is trouble in paradise, however, since they find themselves on opposite sides of an attempt to pass satellite codes to the Russians encoded into a homemade porno film. This is a good premise for an international thriller, but the execution does a belly flop.

This film was produced in Finland to very low filmmaking standards. Since I haven't seen many Finnish films, I can't say whether this is typical or atypical, but it was full of bad scene setups, plot inconsistencies and generally poor directing. The soundtrack was jazzy and nice, but it often didn't fit with the scenes to which it was applied.

Director Ilkka Jarvi-Laturi was trying to present this as a lighthearted romantic comedy and international thriller, but it was marginal on the first count and a disaster on the second. Bill Pullman can carry off the lovable romantic hero role, but as a spy, he is a joke. Irene Jacob was better at handling the two aspects of the role, but the dialogue was so excruciating that her acting talent and beauty were not enough to save it.

Jacob and Pullman had some chemistry in the romantic scenes, but both seemed flummoxed in the comedic espionage scenes. This was some incredibly bad writing and it must have been very difficult for these actors to say their lines without kecking.

This film is a jumbled mess with terrible writing and amateurish direction. I rated it a 4/10. Be sure to miss it.

History is made at night has to be one of the worst films the Finnish film makers have touched in years. What a shame that director Ilkka Järvilaturi -who also made the terrible "Darkness in Tallinn"- has failed with a cast and crew like this: Irene Jacob and Kati Outinen, Kari Väänänen and Bill Pullman, Vesa-Matti Loiri and Bruno Kirby for example. Good performers' talents are wasted in a junk like this! Do your self a favor and don't watch this awful finnish try to make a romantic thriller that moves in time after cold war. This is not even unintentionally funny.

Porn star Henry Saari has role in this. He plays a man in a porn video. Even this video is nicer to watch than the rest of this stupid, ridiculous...