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US Mall 1 - Little Drummer Girl
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List Price: $14.98
Our Price: $34.25
Your Save: $ ( % )
Availability:
Manufacturer: Warner Home Video
Starring: Diane Keaton, Yorgo Voyagis, Klaus Kinski, Sami Frey, Michael Cristofer
Directed By: George Roy Hill
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Binding: VHS Tape
EAN: 9786302877908
Format: Closed-captioned
ISBN: 6302877903
Label: Warner Home Video
Manufacturer: Warner Home Video
Number Of Items: 1
Publisher: Warner Home Video
Release Date: 1994-01-14
Running Time: 130
Studio: Warner Home Video
Theatrical Release Date: 1984-10-19
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: Too good to be missing
Comment: This film is unavailable from Block Buster or NetFlix or the library system. It is too important to be abandoned. I don't know why, if it is considered politically incorrect or too hot to handle, or what. John La Carre wrote without an agenda, showing both sides, warts and all. I plan to loan it to as many people as will watch it.
Sandi
Customer Rating:
Summary: Riveting
Comment: Diane Keaton will never be too old! She's a masterpiece and so is this movie. The gut-wrenching decisions Keaton's character is forced to make are ones that make for truly great drama. A keeper. Not to be missed.
Customer Rating:
Summary: realistic
Comment: Le Carre (David Cornwall) was in British Intelligence just after the war. He, if anyone, is superbly qualified to give insight into what happens in the secret world.
Customer Rating:
Summary: False colors
Comment: George Roy Hill's film of John Le Carre's The Little Drummer Girl was, like most Le Carre adaptations, a big box-office disappointment in 1984 and has long since pretty much disappeared from sight (it's currently only on DVD in Germany). Its plot isn't the easiest of sells, it's true: to track down and kill a Palestinian terrorist, Mossad trick an actress and Palestinian sympathiser into becoming their own undercover agent, in the process revealing and stripping away the inventions and deceits she has carefully cultivated to hide her own lack of a sense of self and creating a new, equally false persona.
On one level it's old ground for the author with another damaged and emotionally immature protagonist providing ideal cannon fodder for the spy game, but it's also one of Le Carre's more personal novels - the absent and less than honest father is clearly based on Le Carre's own while the heroine was so heavily inspired by his half-sister Charlotte Cornwall that it caused something of a backlash against the film when a badly miscast Diane Keaton got the role instead (though there was never any prospect of Cornwall getting the lead in a big-budget globe-trotting thriller from a major Hollywood studio to begin with). It doesn't help that the script highlights her limitations as an actress - her English accent is terrible (even the German and Israeli actors can pronounce Nottingham properly), her delivery of Shaw and Shakespeare in the theatre scenes amateurish and every line that contains the words `I believe' brings out a nasty rash of overacting. She has her moments but even allowing for the fact that she's playing an actress doesn't excuse the weaker moments that undo her best work elsewhere in the film and sporadically threaten to take you out of the story.
It's a particular shame because there's enough meat in the role - a compulsive liar constantly turning her past into a fictional romantic tragedy, passionately believing in the causes of others to fill the void in herself - that a better actress could have elevated the film a couple of notches beyond the okay espionage procedural thriller it is to the darker character study it could have been. As it stands it's a mixture of a few strong moments and a few awkward ones with the bulk of the film efficiently filling in the gaps without any particular distinction.
Politically at least it's more balanced than you might expect: the Mossad agents openly lie and manipulate her with little regard for anything but their own aims despite their displays of bonhomie as they exploit her desperate need for a cause and a surrogate family to belong to while, with the exception of OTT German neo-Nazi hellfrau Helga, who seems to have wandered in from an old WW2 movie, the Palestinians generally avoid easy stereotyping. Everything is wrapped up a little too neatly, but it's never less than watchable and there's a strong supporting turn from a sympathetic Klaus Kinski while a few unexpected familiar faces like Bill Nighy and David Suchet turn up in the supporting cast.
The PAL German DVD has no extras but boasts a decent 1.85:1 transfer with English soundtrack.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Very Mixed Feelings
Comment: For those who haven't read the book--you should, it is, 20-some years later, still relevant and still compelling and still a fast-paced and gripping thriller. Given that this is a book I have read & re-read, I had to have the movie, even when I discovered it was only available on VHS.
Where to begin? Diane Keaton's performance is nearly overshadowed by her 80's shoulder pads, which is saying a lot, as it is an extremely mannered performance. I like Diane Keaton, but she's just not right for this role. That being said, there are a number of indelible scenes--I'm thinking particularly of the encounter on the way to the terrorist training camp and of the sex scene near the end of the movie, when she must go to bed with the (admittedly sexy) killer/terrorist whom she is entrapping. The story is similar to Spielberg's Munich, but this is better, on balance, despite its flaws--more complex, more morally ambiguous. It simplifies the book's complexities, but what movie does not?
3 1/2 stars. Worth renting or buying.
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Editorial Reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: Too good to be missing
Comment: This film is unavailable from Block Buster or NetFlix or the library system. It is too important to be abandoned. I don't know why, if it is considered politically incorrect or too hot to handle, or what. John La Carre wrote without an agenda, showing both sides, warts and all. I plan to loan it to as many people as will watch it.
Sandi
Customer Rating:
Summary: Riveting
Comment: Diane Keaton will never be too old! She's a masterpiece and so is this movie. The gut-wrenching decisions Keaton's character is forced to make are ones that make for truly great drama. A keeper. Not to be missed.
Customer Rating:
Summary: realistic
Comment: Le Carre (David Cornwall) was in British Intelligence just after the war. He, if anyone, is superbly qualified to give insight into what happens in the secret world.
Customer Rating:
Summary: False colors
Comment: George Roy Hill's film of John Le Carre's The Little Drummer Girl was, like most Le Carre adaptations, a big box-office disappointment in 1984 and has long since pretty much disappeared from sight (it's currently only on DVD in Germany). Its plot isn't the easiest of sells, it's true: to track down and kill a Palestinian terrorist, Mossad trick an actress and Palestinian sympathiser into becoming their own undercover agent, in the process revealing and stripping away the inventions and deceits she has carefully cultivated to hide her own lack of a sense of self and creating a new, equally false persona.
On one level it's old ground for the author with another damaged and emotionally immature protagonist providing ideal cannon fodder for the spy game, but it's also one of Le Carre's more personal novels - the absent and less than honest father is clearly based on Le Carre's own while the heroine was so heavily inspired by his half-sister Charlotte Cornwall that it caused something of a backlash against the film when a badly miscast Diane Keaton got the role instead (though there was never any prospect of Cornwall getting the lead in a big-budget globe-trotting thriller from a major Hollywood studio to begin with). It doesn't help that the script highlights her limitations as an actress - her English accent is terrible (even the German and Israeli actors can pronounce Nottingham properly), her delivery of Shaw and Shakespeare in the theatre scenes amateurish and every line that contains the words `I believe' brings out a nasty rash of overacting. She has her moments but even allowing for the fact that she's playing an actress doesn't excuse the weaker moments that undo her best work elsewhere in the film and sporadically threaten to take you out of the story.
It's a particular shame because there's enough meat in the role - a compulsive liar constantly turning her past into a fictional romantic tragedy, passionately believing in the causes of others to fill the void in herself - that a better actress could have elevated the film a couple of notches beyond the okay espionage procedural thriller it is to the darker character study it could have been. As it stands it's a mixture of a few strong moments and a few awkward ones with the bulk of the film efficiently filling in the gaps without any particular distinction.
Politically at least it's more balanced than you might expect: the Mossad agents openly lie and manipulate her with little regard for anything but their own aims despite their displays of bonhomie as they exploit her desperate need for a cause and a surrogate family to belong to while, with the exception of OTT German neo-Nazi hellfrau Helga, who seems to have wandered in from an old WW2 movie, the Palestinians generally avoid easy stereotyping. Everything is wrapped up a little too neatly, but it's never less than watchable and there's a strong supporting turn from a sympathetic Klaus Kinski while a few unexpected familiar faces like Bill Nighy and David Suchet turn up in the supporting cast.
The PAL German DVD has no extras but boasts a decent 1.85:1 transfer with English soundtrack.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Very Mixed Feelings
Comment: For those who haven't read the book--you should, it is, 20-some years later, still relevant and still compelling and still a fast-paced and gripping thriller. Given that this is a book I have read & re-read, I had to have the movie, even when I discovered it was only available on VHS.
Where to begin? Diane Keaton's performance is nearly overshadowed by her 80's shoulder pads, which is saying a lot, as it is an extremely mannered performance. I like Diane Keaton, but she's just not right for this role. That being said, there are a number of indelible scenes--I'm thinking particularly of the encounter on the way to the terrorist training camp and of the sex scene near the end of the movie, when she must go to bed with the (admittedly sexy) killer/terrorist whom she is entrapping. The story is similar to Spielberg's Munich, but this is better, on balance, despite its flaws--more complex, more morally ambiguous. It simplifies the book's complexities, but what movie does not?
3 1/2 stars. Worth renting or buying.
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