Review of Topaz

In the 1960's the escalation of the cold war as a result of the Cuban Missile Crisis led to a boom in spy films on the big screen. James Bond was the big franchise of course but there were many others. Alfred Hitchcock decided to get on this particular bandwagon himself with Topaz and its predecessor Torn Curtain. Unfortunately, these two films were the least inspired efforts of his latter career. The problems were that they lacked the psychological edginess that typified his best work, their more traditional thrills just weren't consistently inspired enough to ensure that the films remained compelling from start to finish.

Like many other spy films, Topaz has a globe-trotting plot. It starts in Copenhagen, hops over to Washington, heads up to New York, flies into Cuba and then rounds things off in Paris. There's certainly not anything wrong with any of this, it's just a shame that the story is so uninspired and bland. The answer to the central mystery about the meaning of 'Topaz' itself isn't ultimately proved to be very interesting; while the ending has a very under-whelming feeling to it overall. In truth it really felt like Hitch himself was going through the motions with this one, basically taking us from A to B with the minimum fuss. That's okay, it's efficient but it isn't too much fun and you kind of forget it all too easily.