Underrated Movie: The Falcon and the Snowman
Title: The Falcon and the Snowman
Year: 1985
Director: John Schlesinger
Writer: Steven Zaillian, based on the book by Robert Lindsey
Stars: Timothy Hutton, Sean Penn, David Suchet, Lori Singer
The Story: The true story of an ex-seminary student who gets a job as a data analyst working for a CIA contractor. When he realizes that the CIA is routinely undermining democracy abroad, even in U.S.-allied countries like Australia, he decides to start selling info to the Soviet Union in a misguided attempt to restore global balance. In order to ferry info to the Soviet embassy in Mexico, he recruits a drug dealing buddy, who quickly screws it all up.
Why It’s Great: In many classic spy thrillers like Three Days of the Condor, the whole goal is to expose the conspiracy to the New York Times. But this movie is willing to admit that in real life, that does little good. As Hutton says, “It’s already public. You can’t get any more public than what happened in Chile. People still don’t believe we engineered that.” We’re never remotely sympathetic to Hutton’s solution, but we also see that he had no legitimate outlet for his anger. That said, this movie has a very different vibe than most “nefarious CIA” movies, exemplified by Hutton’s first day on the job monitoring satellites, when his jingoistic boss turns on a jumbo paper shredder and starts pouring tequila into it to mix margaritas. They then proceed to play Risk all day, oblivious to the parallels between what’s happening on the board and what info is passing through their machines. Perversely, the general air of frivolity makes the wickedness of it all that much more believable.
Link to this Post: http://www.moviewithme.com/blog/archives/984
June 14th, 2010 at 23:18
Ah… remember these events well! Part of my storied past. Frankly, to those who actually knew the real life “Falcon” and “Snowman” upfront & personal, the more interesting character was the latter! The former was never trusted amongst his Big House “peers” who felt “Snowman” was given the royal shaft. The real life drama was infinitely more fascinating than Schlesinger was able to bring to the big screen. However, at the time I personally liked the film a lot as it was a welcome option from the flurry of Hughesian releases that were cutely wrapped up in teenage angst & SIMPLE MINDS soundtracks. And Penn was absolutely transparent in this role for which he was actually able to spend limited “visitation” time with the real Daulton Lee (who 30-years later is still incarcerated in the Federal system!). Check out AT CLOSE RANGE for another filmic take on a real life event that left this film buff haunted & disturbed at how bad mythic Father/Son relationships can get. Easily Madonna’s best song-over-credits release! Probably her best song ever!
June 14th, 2010 at 23:40
Wow, you sound like you’ve led an interesting life! Generally speaking, I’m not a Madonna fan, but I’d totally agree that “Live To Tell” is a great song.
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