IMDb RATING
6.8/10
7.8K
YOUR RATING
Sent to East Berlin to retrieve a Communist defector, British spy Harry Palmer suspects the situation is not what his superiors believe it to be.Sent to East Berlin to retrieve a Communist defector, British spy Harry Palmer suspects the situation is not what his superiors believe it to be.Sent to East Berlin to retrieve a Communist defector, British spy Harry Palmer suspects the situation is not what his superiors believe it to be.
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Storyline
Did you know
- TriviaRussian soldiers on the east side of the Berlin wall purposely disrupted filming by using mirrors to reflect sunlight into the cameras. The scene where Harry Palmer (Sir Michael Caine) walks to Checkpoint Charlie for the first time had to be filmed from a long distance for that reason.
- GoofsDuring the funeral there is a cut to the taxi-driver who now appears to be driving from the right hand seat of a car previously established as left hand drive. This shows the film was reversed during processing so as to match the direction of flow of surrounding shots.
- Quotes
Samantha Steel: My name is Samantha Steel. Some people call me Sam.
Harry Palmer: Edmund Dorf. Some people call me Edna.
- Alternate versionsPresent DVD version starts with a short montage of people having a good time at Kurfürstendamm, enyoing the sun, having a coffee or beer, window shopping etc. The film then segues into the main credits set against the devastated Berlin Wall area. This short - some 15 seconds - sequence was not on previous Swedish VHS versions.
- ConnectionsEdited into MacGyver: Deathlock (1986)
Featured review
Perfect Sunday afternoon pot-boiler material.
Reluctant spy and disgraced army sergeant Harry Palmer gets sent to Berlin to encounter a Russian general that says he wants to defect - but does he?
The success (and continued success) of the Ipcress Files lead to this very solid and very good (if complicated) follow-up which seems Palmer (Michael Caine in his too-cool-for-school best form) back in a cheap raincoat and dowdy clothes on a mission that he seems sure he is going to regret. Indeed he makes clear that only being on probation (still?) causes him to go on it in the first place.
The use of the real Berlin and the performance of Caine and Oskar Homolka (as Colonel Stok) keeps this film going as the plot is rather too thick for my liking.
I am not someone that wants to do this much thinking with my fluff - but I caught most of it or at least the main parts. Couldn't be sure totally who the lesser characters were in bed with though or even if it was not each other.
When the series returned with The Billion Dollar Brain it had got past its sell-by date and seemed to almost parody what had gone before. Like all things it has hard to judge when you have gone too far before you actually have.
As a footnote Howard Hughes used to watch this film over-and-over again (as many as three times a day) when locked in his own self-made lunatic asylum. Did the film drive him mad or help drive him mad. We will never know.
The success (and continued success) of the Ipcress Files lead to this very solid and very good (if complicated) follow-up which seems Palmer (Michael Caine in his too-cool-for-school best form) back in a cheap raincoat and dowdy clothes on a mission that he seems sure he is going to regret. Indeed he makes clear that only being on probation (still?) causes him to go on it in the first place.
The use of the real Berlin and the performance of Caine and Oskar Homolka (as Colonel Stok) keeps this film going as the plot is rather too thick for my liking.
I am not someone that wants to do this much thinking with my fluff - but I caught most of it or at least the main parts. Couldn't be sure totally who the lesser characters were in bed with though or even if it was not each other.
When the series returned with The Billion Dollar Brain it had got past its sell-by date and seemed to almost parody what had gone before. Like all things it has hard to judge when you have gone too far before you actually have.
As a footnote Howard Hughes used to watch this film over-and-over again (as many as three times a day) when locked in his own self-made lunatic asylum. Did the film drive him mad or help drive him mad. We will never know.
helpful•154
- Pedro_H
- May 29, 2007
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Details
Box office
- Gross worldwide
- $183
- Runtime1 hour 42 minutes
- Aspect ratio
- 2.39 : 1
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