Leamas, Alec Leamas. Okay, so he might not be as much of a household name as a certain martini-swilling secret agent. But while a new James Bond film is currently in theaters, critics last week were showing their allegiance to Richard Burton’s classic sixties cold-warhorse upon the release of Martin Ritt’s The Spy Who Came in from the Cold on Criterion DVD. The film, adapted from John le Carré’s best seller, writes Michael Atkinson at IFC.com, “hews so closely to the dishonest and soulless quotidian of spy work that the effect is thoroughly grown-up, a bracing whisky shot after drinking gallons of James Bond–brand pink lemonade.”
In the New York Times, Dave Kehr also pits spy vs. spy: “Released the same year as Thunderball, the fourth of the phenomenally successful James Bond films starring Sean Connery, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold consistently positions itself as a rebuke to the glamorous, action movie ethos of the Bond films: no fancy gadgets or bikini-clad beauties here, only a pinched and dingy universe in which the moral compass spins without direction.” Of course, one doesn’t have to pick sides, but Spy will leave you shaken and stirred.
Update (5DEC08): The Austin Chronicle chimes in on this “thriller by way of kitchen-sink drama.”
1965
112 min
Black and White
1.85:1
Categories: Press Notes
1 Comments
Mon 01 Dec at 07:00 PM
Elke Sisco
How neat of you to post the trailer! I love your new site.
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