You're only saying that because you're a two-bit, pre-pubescent hack whose taste veers toward Mission Impossible 3.
You may not realize that practically everything in this movie actually happened in some form. The events have been fictionalized, but are not fictitious. This film centers around the event that made the CIA a household name: the failure of the Bay of Pigs invasion. Prior to this, the general public knew even less about the CIA than people know today about the NSA. After it, the CIA captured the public imagination as the source of all corruption, evil, and insanity in the United States.
The only especially glaring BS element to the film is the reason the movie provides for the failure of the Bay of Pigs invasion, which is very kid-glovish and almost apologetic. The film implies that everything was squared away until a stupid kid blabbed the Where and When (why did he even know these?) in a sexual stupor in the Belgian Congo. In reality, the invasion failed for a million reasons, which can be summed up most succinctly as "Uber Epic Fail on the part of everyone involved at every level going all the way back to the planning stage." The fact that the Where and When HAD indeed been leaked was almost irrelevant.
This is as close to an honest mainstream biography of the CIA as will ever probably exist. If the names were changed back to the real names, the cast list would be:
Matt Damon ... Jim Angleton
Alec Baldwin ... Sam Papich
Billy Crudup ... Kim Philby
Robert De Niro ... Wild Bill Donovan
William Hurt ... Allen Dulles
Mark Ivanir ... Yuri Nosenko (except Nosenko was a plant in reality)
Lee Pace ... Richard Helms
Joe Pesci ... Sam Giancana
John Sessions ... Anatoly Golitsin (except Golitsin wasn't a plant in reality)
Oleg Shtefanko ... Alexander Shelepin (sort of...)
John Turturro ... Ray Rocca
Marcos Cohen ... Jacobo Arbenz Guzman
Interestingly, the CIA has commented on this movie, and one of the more hilarious things they say is that "The interrogation of Mironov, with its use of violence and drugs, bears no resemblance to Nosenko's actual treatment."
In actual fact, it very closely parallels his actual treatment, except that he didn't die... he only almost died. While on LSD. After having been brutally beaten, among other things.
This is a brilliant movie, if you actually know the background.
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alveolate
12 years ago
just because an ambitious film manages to pack in a multitude of commentary or references to real life incidents does NOT instantly make it brilliant. many hollywood projects have attempted historicals and very seldom do they get the mix right between historicity, narrative, and entertainment value.
some of the questions i would pose after watching this film:
1. what is the main narrative here? is it Edward Wilson's life? the birth of the CIA? Mother vs Ulysses? counter-intelligence paranoia? or perhaps too much of all the above?
2. why the non-linear chronology? was there a purpose to the jarring timeline jumps other than to seem "modern" or to confuse the average movie-goer?
3. was the ensemble cast well-used? amid all the devastatingly monochromatic spook-type characters, how many were decently developed, apart from Ed Sr? in three hours... were the women and their suffering portrayed effectively to draw the audience?
4. what is the intended impact on the audience as the film ends? we see a barely emotional man (perhaps more accurately, emotionally neutered) with his family torn apart, but himself walking quietly, unassumingly, almost confidently, into his new CIA office... do we admire his stoicism? do we ponder the cost of patriotism in the guise of covert ops? do we lament his life?
or do we even have energy left to consider any of the above... after 3 hours of staring at stone-faced spooks, all the while trying to piece together the scattered timeline?
'Boring, Tedious, Solemn, Self-Important' is actually quite a fair comment from the average tortured movie-goer. unless you're a hardcore Tom Clancy fan or (god-forbid) someone from the intelligence community... then perhaps it'd ring many bells for you.
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