Review of The Spy Who Came In from the Cold (1965) by Kieran F — 29 Jul 2014

I recently read the book and thought i'd check out the film as well and I can say that Allthough I enjoyed both the film had more things wrong with it then the book.

I will say the film follows the book pretty closely as far as conversations go but..that's about all.

I honestly found more things wrong wth it then right. for one it does follow the book closley YES but at the same time it jumps around too much. I mean it goes from like chapter 1 to chapter 11 in a matter of minutes like WTF. I mean it does a great job of following the dialogue (it's actually spot on in the book) but as far as the methods of the main character and etc. no.

That's another thing the book did great that the film did HORRIBLY. in the book the main character,Leamus, his reasoning for what he's doing and his decent into..well..a disgraced officer is better documented and more interesting. In this it totally skips like..3/4 of his decent and jumps right to the point in the book where he's at his worst. Very disappointing for two reasons. One it makes the character hard to be sympathized over instead turns him into..well...a bastard. and Two it misses out on a huge relationship point in the character between a woman named Liz(who in this film is named Nan and has NOTHING to do with the character) and just avoids it. I guess the rest is okay but after reading the book and then seeing this film I'm disappointed EXTREMELY with this I mean the book isn't even that long(235 pgs) and they turned it into a dull film If you've NEVER read the book you may enjoy it...but if you've read the book you'll be disappointed with this. I honestly would love to see this film redone nowadays.