Review of The Russia House (1990) by Kenny K — 25 Mar 2012

Set during the Glastnost period of the USSR, a manuscript detailing the Soviet's inability to keep up with the West's arms capabilities is smuggled to London and falls into the hands of a besotted cynical publisher (Sean Connery), as well as the denizens of MI-5. In typical Le Carre fashion, no one is pure, no one has the best interests of their country and civilization at heart . . . all they want to do is keep the arms race alive and make, you guessed it: loads of money! This startlingly lame rational, in the face of tens of thousands of members of the intelligence community who live and risk their lives otherwise, is just the way Le Carre rolls: without perfidy, where is the plot? Could it actually be that the Soviets were mass-murderers who held 200,000,000 people captive in a continent-spanning gulag and were thus worthy of being tossed on the ash-heap of history? Oh no, they are JUST LIKE US: weak, pathetic, and grasping, and besides, they make great vodka and the countryside is idyllic. A couple of exceptions aside (James Fox as the British head of intelligence and Roy Scheider as his American counterpart, now and then), everyone in the movie is a parody of this over-used spy thriller type.

HOWEVER, there is a redeeming quality to this film: Michelle Pfeiffer convinces as the honest, courageous go-between the author of the manuscript (an underused Klaus Brandauer) and the English publisher, Connery. And the love affair that develops between Pfeiffer and Connery is one of the best I've seen in cinema: it makes the heart-ache as both of them wonder if they can trust the other and their feelings for each other. What was supposed to be an ethical dilemma where Connery nobly chooses the woman over his own country--and he's supposed to be honored therefore--fails utterly. All we see is his selfishness and her neediness to escape the Soviet Union.

It's sad, the book had the makings of a great story where the hero could have done what was right AND gotten the girl. Oh well, this was the 1990s after all, not the 1940s.