The Looking Glass War

1970 ""Why do we listen to them? Why do we fight their wars for them?""
5.8| 1h48m| PG| en| More Info
Released: 04 February 1970 Released
Producted By: Columbia Pictures
Country: United Kingdom
Budget: 0
Revenue: 0
Official Website:
Synopsis

When a Polish sailor jumps ship in Britain, a couple of local intelligence operatives keep him under surveillance. Soon, he’s recruited to infiltrate a missile installation outside of East Berlin and bring back photos of the new rockets.

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Reviews

Hellen I like the storyline of this show,it attract me so much
Lollivan It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.
Nayan Gough A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.
Scarlet The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.
Claudio Carvalho During the Cold War, the British Intelligence receives a blurred photograph from East Germany taken from Hamburg and Director LeClerc (Ralph Richardson) believes that they are missiles. Their agent Taylor King (Timothy West), who receives a film that might clarify the detail from a pilot in Finland, is found dead on the road and the police believe that he was accidentally killed in a hit-and-run. LeClerc meets the Polish defector Fred Leiser (Christopher Jones), who jumped overboard from a ship expecting to have asylum and stay with his British girlfriend (Susan George) that is pregnant, and decides to recruit him to cross the border and spy the Eat German facility to check the missiles. In return, he would have salary, insurance and political asylum. Leiser is trained by the agent and family man John Avery (Anthony Hopkins) and soon he finds that his girlfriend has had an abortion. When Leiser crosses the border, he stumbles with the local Anna (Pia Degermark) and they stay together in the beginning of a dangerous journey where he is just a pawn in a war game."The Looking Glass War" is a dated thriller with a disappointing story. The characters are poorly developed and it is hard to understand the motivation of Leiser in his assignment after discovering that his girlfriend had forced an abortion. He is neither British nor an idealistic man to risk his life in a suicidal mission. Actually it is difficult to understand who he is since he is capable to kill two men in cold blood, slap the face of his girlfriend and let Anna with him knowing that his mission is compromised. The betrayal of LeClerc is the great plot point in the story but also difficult to understand why he plots all operation apparently to justify his agency and get rid off a defector. In the end, there is no consequence receiving or not the message from Leiser. My vote is six.Title (Brazil): Not Available
sanddragon939 'The Spy who Came in from the Cold', and the TV adaptation of 'Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy' led me to have high expectations of any John Le Carre adaptation...sadly, 'The Looking Glass War' falls short of those expectations.The basic essence of the novel's plot is preserved-an obscure intelligence unit called 'the Department' training and sending a Pole to East Germany. What the film fails to capture however are the inner psychological and emotional conflicts of the characters, especially those of the reluctant 'spymaster with scruples' Avery, and the manipulated agent Laiser. Part of the reason for this is the complete reinvention of Laiser's character. He goes from being an intensely loyal former agent from the Department's glory days in WW2 and a naturalised British citizen, to being an ill-tempered Polish drifter who really has scant motivation for taking up the job to begin with. Avery for his part, is hardly developed as a character, which makes his sudden reservations about the scheme in the end somewhat difficult to comprehend.If there is one plus point about the film, its that it spends a lot more time on Laiser's actual infiltration into East Germany, which actually forms a VERY small segment of the novel. However, Laiser's character being completely changed as it was, his brief relationship with the German girl becomes more like a run-of-the-mill romance of a spy story, as opposed to what it was in the novel-the last attempt of a betrayed agent to find human comfort before his inevitable capture...On the whole, its not a bad film. Even the bad parts are entertaining at times. But it certainly DOES NOT live up to the standards of other Le Carre adaptations.
NewtonFigg POSSIBLE SPOILERS In the novel, British military intelligence in 1961 was looking for something to justify its existence. Some ambiguous aerial photos suggested the East Germans had constructed a missile site. Instead of sharing this information with... who? (sorry I don't know the other intelligence service. MI6?) the military people, who had not run an operation in years, decided to do what they knew best: send one of their now aged WWII spies with WWII equipment ( a 40 lb. tube radio with different crystals to change transmitting frequencies) into East Germany to verify the existence of the missile installation and radio back his findings. The East Germans were mystified by the strange radio messages until an old sergeant vaguely remembered how English spies had sent out messages 20 years earlier. The poor spy's floundering around created an international incident and the military intelligence people were ordered to pull the plug on the operation. LeCarre's caustic comments on the military intelligence service were swept aside and the movie was made treating all the bumbling as a serious spy story. Ah well. In 1961 the cold war was very serious business.
davegering No, the movie didn't suck me in. I got sucked into watching it by some highly favorable comments. I should have paid more attention to the ratings.If you want to watch LeCarre, there are much better examples than this. The pacing is completely off in this movie; as soon as something interesting starts, it is truncated for irrelevant meanderings. Apparently the director wanted to make this a "mood piece" rather than an action movie, and as a result, it never develops any momentum or suspense.On balance, this is just a somewhat disappointing period piece. Watchable, but nothing more.