User Reviews

The story is not the usual LeCarré's George Smiley thriller set in the cold war era and featuring intrigue and psychological puzzles. It is a story relating to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Twenty-eight years after its release, the story in this film still manages to captivate, at least it did me. It has action and suspense. For those who have seen few if any 1980s movies and think anything older than a decade can't be all that good, I should remind you that 'The Godfather' is 30 years old. In the same year as 'Little Drummer Girl', the following movies were released: The Terminator, Blood Simple, The Bounty, Tightrope. Granted, 1984 was not a year rich for good movies except the ones I mentioned.

Diane Keaton gives a solid performance. Klaus Kinski excels at being a cold 'so and so'. If you have an evening of "Let's watch some old movies", keep this one in mind. For those who like more recent LeCarré's movies, there's always 'The Tailor Of Panama' and the soon to be released on DVD/Blue Ray, 'Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy'. The earliest one I've seen and a classic it is, watch 'The Spy Who Came n from The Cold'. As my summary states/implies, 'Little Drummer Girl' is easier to follow than other LeCarré's novels on screen; you simply don't need to think as much to figure where it is going or how you got to wherever you are in the story. This is not necessarily a selling point just an observation.

This movie is quite "ho-hum". Neither the difficulty of a bystander drawn into violent conflict in the Middle East (e.g., Eva Marie Sainte in Exodus), nor the violence, nor the espionage presents anything novel to the viewer.

And there is one central problem: that outlined by Daniel Baker below in his review. The movie's central charge is that promiscuous Western women are fools and will, in exchange for a pleasant lunch, be willing accomplices to any violence anyone has in mind. Thus, the initial killings in the movie are caused by a Swedish girl. Why? She enjoyed sex with the terrorist who enjoined her to do so - after she met him at a club.

The protagonist, Diane Keaton's character suddenly and dramatically changes the politics of a lifetime - due to a pleasant lunch and evening with an Israeli member of Mossad - even though she realizes that the Israeli deliberately caused her to believe he was another. Indeed, it's telling that Keaton's character came to adore one (hooded) man due to a short talk he gives, another because he gives her a pleasant lunch, and subverts the entire objective of her mission after she has slept with a third man. The statement, "OH! He's cute" presages a complete change of life for any woman.

One is tempted to be kind and think that presenting ongoing Palestinian terrorism was novel when this was released in 1984, but we'd seen Exodus, Cast a Giant Shadow and others long before. (Both are more interesting movies). Moreover, it had been a dozen years since everyone had watched the Munich Olympics' kidnapping, it was 36 years after the Arabs in Palestine began their campaign of terror against the new state of Israel, and a century after the Arabs began to terrorize the Jews in Palestine.

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Another problem I had with this movie is the completely different reaction of Keaton's character to witnessing the killing of her friend/co-worker in Lebanon and her witness of the killing of the man she had worked throughout the movie to trap and kill. Why is she not unhinged by the former - but devastated by the death of her mission's enemy? One would think people who had spent long periods in terrorist camps would be inured to this sort of thing - and moviegoers have seen aplomb in the face of such violence in movies so frequently that her reaction at the end of the film seems strange.

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This attempt to mix romance with a story about terrorism didn't work. There's too little real suspense - and since we hardly see any romance (merely a woman who makes a fool of herself with each good looking man) we have a very hard time sympathizing with her. Moreover, we hardly SEE any romance - simply a puppy-like enthusiasm about possible mates.

In some respects, this movie should have been re-jiggered to be expressly about the Keaton character's sad loneliness, about her pathetic yearning to marry in incipient middle age. Then the movie would make more sense of why she falls for anyone (from anywhere) with a smile -- and she'll do anything (including participation in terrorist training camps) to win his favor - and when she likes another, she'll reverse course. The problem is that pity for the main character does not easily yield moment by moment to sympathy with a fool.

It's not very good.

Scary bad acting by Diane Keaton. Her part is awfully cheesy too. The European and Arab actors are very good.

Spoiler - Do they ever reveal why it had to be Diane Keaton who drove the red car to Munich? And how did Keaton go from being slapped around by interrogators to walking out of the London subway?

The movie contains nice video of Europe and the Mediterranean countries and the depiction of intelligence techniques is very good.

This was never going to be a great movie. But it could have been a good movie. However, there is Diane Keaton cast as the main character. The story revolves around her-and she was awful. I'm not quite sure just what it was, but her acting feels like just that. It is too dramatic in places. Her character is a stage actress recruited to play a spy. She never seemed to lose that stage actress presence. I would not have thought that a single character could impact a movie so much. But Keaton, and what they did with her character, altered too much for me to really enjoy it.

The finale is a fitting one as Keaton's dramatic hysteria is on full display.

It's incredible that this major 1984 release--next-to-last feature for the Oscar-winning director of "Butch Cassidy," "The Sting," "The World of Henry Orient," "Slap Shot," "The World According to Garp" and more--is so completely forgotten and hard to access now, even if it was a commercial disappointment.

Diane Keaton is miscast as le Carre's heroine, a British actress with liberal beliefs who is duped into infiltrating Palestinian terrorist ranks so that US/Israeli intelligence can in turn betray her and destroy the anti-Israeli cadre. In le Carre's novel, the central figure is an actress very young in years and naive politically. Not only was Keaton wrong in terms of age and nationality (she looks ridiculous in the boot-camp segments, but even more so in her early sequence as a U.S. actress improbably starring onstage in Shakespeare), but her unflattering frizzy hairdos and shoulder-padded costumes make her look even older.

(SPOILERS)

Nonetheless, her committed performance and Hill's deft handling of a very complicated narrative draw you in, eventually riveting attention. The violent climax is startling, Keaton's subsequent sequence of complete nervous breakdown as good as anything she's ever done. It's also worth seeing for stellar supporting performances by Sami Frey and an unusually subdued Klaus Kinski.

This is one of those films that are normally put into the category of 'interesting failure'. To make a note right up front, the plot is almost impossible to follow. The story concerns the labyrinthine politics of the Middle East and the main character's unsuccessful attempt to make any sense of the issues involved.

Unintentionally 'The Little Drummer Girl' reflects the American bewilderment at understanding the almost tribal loyalties of the political situation between Jews and Arabs, which it still finds virtually impossible to comprehend. This is a facile rendering of issues that perhaps are too serious to be regurgitated as entertainment for the masses and for this reason 'Little Drummer Girl' is, to say the least, disappointing. (It does not escape me that I am writing this at the time of the Egyptian uprising of January 2011.)

The film opens in the provinces of England where a young American actress (Diane Keaton) is plying her trade on the stage, an unknown personality but pretty and talented. She attends a local meeting of Palestinian sympathisers and is recruited to the Palestinian cause as a secret agent. Or so it seems. The meeting was merely a front for the secret Israeli Mossad agency and she is in fact expected to help the Mossad find a so-called Palestinian terrorist who has escaped their so-called 'justice'. Naturally, being an all-American red blooded girl, she discovers the terrorist's whereabouts and falls in love with this dashing freedom fighter. Keaton then proceeds to blunder around London and the Middle East attempting to trap him because the Mossad is telling her that he is only a murderer of innocent civilians who is getting what he deserves. So, feelings get mixed up with political conviction.

If 'The Little Drummer Girl' is to believed, not only this woman, but most Americans in general are an extremely naïve lot when it comes to understanding American foreign policy in the Middle East. The audience as well as Keaton are meant to feel foolish by the mechanics of the plot, in which neither viewer nor protagonist is told a whit about what is going on amidst the mayhem of violence, bombings, and secret double crosses. 'The Little Drummer Girl' can't be accused of being a dull film; on the contrary, it expects too much from the audience: there is too much story to take in; there are no discernible heroics for the audience to cheer on as both sides, Arab and Israeli appear to be ruthless and untrustworthy; and the main character is vacillating, constantly left uninformed and is constantly making the wrong decisions when it comes to trusting any individual. As the audience is meant to identify with her, they end up feeling the same way, ie out of their comfort zone, which is not a good thing for an audience to be feeling.

For Diane Keaton this is a demanding part but I believe that she was miscast. To me a better choice would have been someone with more cojones, perhaps Susan Sarandon, or even Jessica Lange (who was probably too young for the part anyway.) Klaus Kinski makes up for this miscasting as he has an important role as the chief of Mossad, a wily character who manages to make the Mossad (seem) likable, and their reactionary politics tolerable for a piece of escapism which this is, despite its pretensions toward being something more important.

Directed by George Roy Hill, this was once available on rental video, but I have not seen it anywhere else. 'The Little Drummer Girl' is little more than the sum of its shortcomings. It's about an important subject and it tries to take that subject seriously; its production values are high, there's plenty of action as well as plot and for such onerous subject matter the film is reasonably entertaining. It's a good example of how a film can still retain its entertainment value as a genre entry, and remain something that is worth seeing for curiosity value but it would be a mistake to indicate that it signified anything more than that.

If anyone was to accuse 'The Little Drummer Girl' of being Hollywood propaganda, I would not attempt to argue with them.