The Company

2007

Seasons & Episodes

  • 1
7.7| 0h30m| TV-14| en| More Info
Released: 05 August 2007 Ended
Producted By: Mid Atlantic Films
Country: United States of America
Budget: 0
Revenue: 0
Official Website: http://www.tnt.tv/series/thecompany/
Synopsis

The Company tells the thrilling story of Cold War CIA agents imprisoned in double lives, fighting an amoral, elusive, formidable enemy – and each other – in an internecine battle within the Company itself.

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Reviews

ReaderKenka Let's be realistic.
Dirtylogy It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.
Brendon Jones It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.
Kaelan Mccaffrey Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.
Robert J. Maxwell A TV miniseries in six parts about spying on both sides of the Cold War. Kids, the term "Cold War" refers to the rivalry and occasional proxy wars between the United States and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, now known as Russia. Between 1945 and 1990, both sides poured enormous amounts of money, effort, blood, and general discomfort into espionage nd counter-espionage. Our agency was the CIA and the USSR had the KGB. We finally won, partly by forcing the USSR to spend itself into oblivion. Both sides played pretty dirty. "We made a lot of mistakes along the way," muses the central CIA figure, Christ O'Donnell. "We won, didn't we?", replies his pragmatic colleague, Alfred Molina.I see no point in going into the forty-five year history of the Cold War, but I have to say that the film reminded me of Herman Wouk's massive works, "The Winds of War" and "War and Remembrance." Somehow or other, O'Donnell finds himself in the middle of just about every important incident in which the CIA was involved, like the Hungarian uprising of 1956 and the Bay of Pigs in 1961. Nothing about Chile and Allende because that was less of a mistake and more like a CIA-backed assassination.It's a reasonably good show. The production values are high and the historical details seem accurate enough for most purposes. Shooting locations included Ontario, Puerto Rico, and Budapest. The acting for the most part is professional, with standout performances by Michael Keaton, unusually subdued and convincing as a determined bulldog sniffing through mountains of data and hanging on to his conclusions, and by Rory Cochrane, who has the pudgy face of a comic and the deep growl of Russel Crowe. Both do fine work here.As in Wouk's works there are a couple of romances sprinkled through the story but it's far from a soap opera. Most of the time is spent on ferreting out double agents known as "moles" within the CIA, which is known as "the company." The Romanian actress Alexandra Maria Lara is cast as a ballerina who is O'Donnel's contact behind the Iron Curtain and becomes his main squeeze, despite firm instruction against it. She's attractive and an appealing character. Less appealing (as a character) is Natascha McElhone, whose big, bulging eyes and bony nose are beautiful in their own way.Chris O'Donnell as Jack McCauliffe, the sometimes doubtful protagonist, looks and acts more like a male model out of the pages of Gentleman's Quarterly or the New York Times Magazine. He's the weakest link in the story, more handsome and more bland than Kent Smith, and if it weren't for all the tension and mystery, he might easily have torpedoed it.And it IS a good story. The first two hours of exposition are a bit slow as we must be introduced to three Yalies who go their separate ways after graduation. Thereafter, the pace picks up. At times, the action we witness is particularly brutal. People get the crap beat out of them or are shot while begging for their lives. It's a dirty business all around. Yet, with all the intrigue and enigmas, the tale is never really confusing. It takes some concentration but we can follow the characters in their peregrinations.
mpag Michael Keaton's performance is spellbinding, astounding. I couldn't believe what I was watching. When he's on screen, he lifts the piece onto a wholly different level. Unreservedly worth watching for his screen time alone. The unnerving atmosphere he creates happily offsets the unfortunate mawkishness that marrs parts of the Berlin and Budapest stories. Alfred Molina also deserves praise for a strong, gutsy performance as a permanently booze-fueled, no nonsense old time field commander. Production values are pretty high for a television series - Ridley Scott's production presence no doubt helped on that front - and the post-war look and atmosphere of the Berlin sequences is particularly well realised. But this is unmistakably Keaton's tour-de-force.
nestaft I've just watched this series in the UK where we've got it on the BBC for some reason 18 months after it premiered in the US. For lovers of historically based fiction and it how it relates to our modern world it was certainly enjoyable and dramatic in places. I enjoyed some of the acting particularly from Michael Keaton , Rory Cochrane and Tom Hollander. If these 3 men were more photogenic, or we did'nt live in such a superficial world , I 'm sure these fantastic actors would have a lot more exposure than they have had done and bagged a lot more high profile roles , instead of the ludicrously over-hyped likes of Brad Pitt and Leonardo Di Caprio. Also this series gave us a look at some of the espionage machinations and seminal events shaping the Cold War.However it had numerous rather large flaws. Firstly the series insulted the intelligence of the viewer by being too overly pro CIA in viewpoint in places. The CIA were portrayed as basically good guys laying it on the line to defend capitalism, valiantly soldiering on despite betrayal by self serving politicians and shady moles. This overlooks the numerous morally questionable and some might say ultimately self defeating operations and strategies of the CIA during the cold war, which anyone with a reasonably inquisitive mind can find out about. It is of course a good thing that America "won" the cold war, and on balance even with all its flaws , democratic capitalism was and is a superior system to totalitarian communism. However the filmmakers should have trusted the viewers to come to that conclusion themselves without overly trying to force it. The film The Good Sheperd which covers some of the same ground as this series was far more effective in highlighting some of the shady ethical ground America covered in trying to win the Cold warSecondly I think the series was too ambitious in trying to deal with such an important and long period of history in such a small running time. The Mini series should have been longer and this I think would have given us a more nuanced and detailed look at the time in historyit covered. Also some details of the storyline were incredulous and have been mentioned on other posts. Finally I think Chris O'Donnell was a wrong choice to play the main character of the series. His limited acting range lessened the impact of several key dramatic scenes he was involved in . He was just about adequate in the role but there are much better character actors who could have been brought in instead of a past his best film star( nothing personal Chris ) . So in all a decent series , but if you want to learn about the cold war , your best bet remains a wide range of books from your local library or bookshop.
thevandahl This is entertaining, but cinema. I happened to be reading Tim Weiners "Legacy of Ashes" when this came on television, and can say that some "artistic liberties" have been taken. Take episode 3, where supposedly an American agent was in contact with the rebels; according to Weiner, who've had access to the archives, the CIA knew next to nothing about what was going on during the uprising, no more than it read in the papers. This man McAuliffe, which supposedly was apprehended by the Hungarian secret police, is not mentioned in he book. That does not automatically mean that he didn't exist, but if this is to be an accurate account, it means the filmmakers had better access to information than the Pulitzer-prize winning author who've written a 700 page book about the history of the CIA. To me, that seems rather unlikely. Much more probable, in my opinion, is that they preferred exciting over accurate, and made something which isn't historically correct at all, other than the names of some of the people involved.Perhaps not a complete fib, but "history-lovers" have me excused. This is not history, but fantasy. I give it 6 for entertainment value.

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