Review – The Quiller Memorandum

Any movie – especially a spy movie – with the word “memorandum” in the title is a safe bet to be dull. And on that count this one sadly fails to disappoint. On the other hand, I kinda like dull spy movies, because they make espionage look more like the workaday (albeit dangerous) job it is rather than the realm of glamorous super heroes. In this tale George Segal stars as a contract agent brought in by what appears to be MI-6 to break a ring of neo-Nazis in 1960s Berlin. Spy movie vet Alec Guiness does a solid – if all too brief – job as the chief of the operation, and Max von Sydow plays the head of the bad guy cabal. If you’re looking for cars with ejector seats, seek elsewhere. But if you want a good production that takes ample advantage of the paranoid world of spies and counter-spies, this one does the trick. Just about my only major objection were the un-subtitled exchanges between our hero and some of the German characters. Mildly amusing