Spy Vs Spy
Saw The Spy Who Came In From The Cold, directed by Martin Ritt and starring Richard Burton. Man it’s bleak. Not a laugh in the whole movie. And yet it makes me want to read the entire Le Carre oeuvre. (Alright, the Smiley books. Constant Gardener, ewww.) There are no heroes. The spies are regular schlubs, they don’t carry cool gadgets or drive snazzy cars, and they don’t actually engage in hand-to-hand combat. They wage war with their brains: reading the enemy, predicting their moves, finding exploitable flaws. Double-crosses become triple-crosses become quadruple-crosses. “Intelligence” lives up to its name. One has to admire the cold, calculating bastards who run the agents. I wonder if the fact that the espionage genre has moved on from John Le Carre to the Tom Clancies reflects the decline in “intelligence”. Technology aids the clever, and it also enables the mediocre; it democratises.
I also realized that Russell Crowe wants to be Richard Burton. Same eyes.
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May 27th, 2008 at 02:56
Spy stuffs are only as exciting as the guys portraying them in the movies. Take for instance, Matt Damon as Jason Bourne. Loved the car chases, the cliffhanging escapes, the brutal man to man combat, deceptions, betrayals and twists. There’s just one scene I can’t accept: Bourne GOES THROUGH a METAL and GLASS window and he emerges ALIVE and apparently unscathed? A human being CAN’T survive such a thing, regardless of whatever military or martial arts training they may have undergone.
May 27th, 2008 at 09:30
It’s just the times, I guess. Tom Clancy’s works are after all classified as “techno-thrillers,” which, you have to admit, is a different genre with that of Le Carre’s novels. Of course, Le Carre is a much better writer than Clancy. But I must confess I enjoy very much Clancy’s works (almost as much as I enjoy hanging out with morally loose women).
Is it true that President Jack Ryan’s son is also in the intelligence business?