Little Drummer Girl
by George Roy Hill
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Product details
Actor: Diane Keaton, Klaus Kinski, Michael Cristofer, Sami Frey, Yorgo VoyagisDirector: George Roy Hill
Edition: VHS Tape
Audio: English (Original Language), Analog
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, HiFi Sound, NTSC
Running Time: 130 minutes
Release Date: 1994-01-14
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Publisher: Warner Home Video
Studio: Warner Home Video
VHS Movie Reviews of Little Drummer Girl
Movie Review: Riveting
Summary: 5 Stars
Diane Keaton will never be too old! She's a masterpiece and so is this movie. The gut-wrenching decisions Keaton's character is forced to make are ones that make for truly great drama. A keeper. Not to be missed.Movie Review: realistic
Summary: 5 Stars
Le Carre (David Cornwall) was in British Intelligence just after the war. He, if anyone, is superbly qualified to give insight into what happens in the secret world. Movie Review: False colors
Summary: 3 Stars
George Roy Hill's film of John Le Carre's The Little Drummer Girl was, like most Le Carre adaptations, a big box-office disappointment in 1984 and has long since pretty much disappeared from sight (it's currently only on DVD in Germany). Its plot isn't the easiest of sells, it's true: to track down and kill a Palestinian terrorist, Mossad trick an actress and Palestinian sympathiser into becoming their own undercover agent, in the process revealing and stripping away the inventions and deceits she has carefully cultivated to hide her own lack of a sense of self and creating a new, equally false persona.
On one level it's old ground for the author with another damaged and emotionally immature protagonist providing ideal cannon fodder for the spy game, but it's also one of Le Carre's more personal novels - the absent and less than honest father is clearly based on Le Carre's own while the heroine was so heavily inspired by his half-sister Charlotte Cornwall that it caused something of a backlash against the film when a badly miscast Diane Keaton got the role instead (though there was never any prospect of Cornwall getting the lead in a big-budget globe-trotting thriller from a major Hollywood studio to begin with). It doesn't help that the script highlights her limitations as an actress - her English accent is terrible (even the German and Israeli actors can pronounce Nottingham properly), her delivery of Shaw and Shakespeare in the theatre scenes amateurish and every line that contains the words `I believe' brings out a nasty rash of overacting. She has her moments but even allowing for the fact that she's playing an actress doesn't excuse the weaker moments that undo her best work elsewhere in the film and sporadically threaten to take you out of the story.
It's a particular shame because there's enough meat in the role - a compulsive liar constantly turning her past into a fictional romantic tragedy, passionately believing in the causes of others to fill the void in herself - that a better actress could have elevated the film a couple of notches beyond the okay espionage procedural thriller it is to the darker character study it could have been. As it stands it's a mixture of a few strong moments and a few awkward ones with the bulk of the film efficiently filling in the gaps without any particular distinction.
Politically at least it's more balanced than you might expect: the Mossad agents openly lie and manipulate her with little regard for anything but their own aims despite their displays of bonhomie as they exploit her desperate need for a cause and a surrogate family to belong to while, with the exception of OTT German neo-Nazi hellfrau Helga, who seems to have wandered in from an old WW2 movie, the Palestinians generally avoid easy stereotyping. Everything is wrapped up a little too neatly, but it's never less than watchable and there's a strong supporting turn from a sympathetic Klaus Kinski while a few unexpected familiar faces like Bill Nighy and David Suchet turn up in the supporting cast.
The PAL German DVD has no extras but boasts a decent 1.85:1 transfer with English soundtrack.
Movie Review: Very Mixed Feelings
Summary: 3 Stars
For those who haven't read the book--you should, it is, 20-some years later, still relevant and still compelling and still a fast-paced and gripping thriller. Given that this is a book I have read & re-read, I had to have the movie, even when I discovered it was only available on VHS.
Where to begin? Diane Keaton's performance is nearly overshadowed by her 80's shoulder pads, which is saying a lot, as it is an extremely mannered performance. I like Diane Keaton, but she's just not right for this role. That being said, there are a number of indelible scenes--I'm thinking particularly of the encounter on the way to the terrorist training camp and of the sex scene near the end of the movie, when she must go to bed with the (admittedly sexy) killer/terrorist whom she is entrapping. The story is similar to Spielberg's Munich, but this is better, on balance, despite its flaws--more complex, more morally ambiguous. It simplifies the book's complexities, but what movie does not?
3 1/2 stars. Worth renting or buying.
Movie Review: Bang The Drum Slowly
Summary: 2 Stars
The problem with many of the movies based on John le Carre's carefully woven books is the condensing of the plot, which ruins the overall development of the pace that is driven by the characters.
The Little Drummer Girl is an ambitious novel, as le Carre meticulously constructs the evolution of Charlie from an English radical left-wing actress - who is anti-Zionist - to a Palestinian terrorist, with a vicious twist. She has handlers on both sides of the conflict.
The movie changes Charlie - who allegedly is based on actress Vanessa Redgrave - to an American portrayed by Diane Keaton. Klaus Kinski plays Israeli spymaster Martin Kurtz, whose aim is to infiltrate the Kahlil terrorist organization and kill its leader, who has successfully carried out bombings of Jewish-related targets in Europe.
Though working for the Israelis seems to go against the politics of Charlie, it is her growing love for her case officer, Joseph (Yorgo Voyagis), that seemingly drives her ambition. Touching on the psychological and physical consequences from being manipulated in the game of shadows, Charlie ultimately pays a heavy personal price.
The movie stumbles on several levels. Keaton as a fledgling terrorist just doesn't work. The scenes at the training camp fail to convey the sacrifice and political conditioning of recruits. Also, the crucial blur between perceived good & evil that are mainstays of le Carre's novels is lost in the transistion from page to screen.
The Little Drummer Girl was my favorite le Carre novel until the release of Single & Single. The movie just doesn't have the time or energy to make le Carre's vision reach its grand potential.
Summary of Little Drummer Girl
Middle-eastern terrorism provides the dense, perpetually timely context of The Little Drummer Girl, loyally adapted from John Le Carr?'s complex bestseller. It's slow going at first, taking pains to establish the tragically complicated plight of Charlie (Diane Keaton), a left-wing, pro-Palestinian actress, recruited by Israeli intelligence in 1981 to play the role of a lifetime: Once her loyalties are turned, she will lure a dominant Palestinian terrorist (Sami Frey) into a deadly trap. She's an unwitting pawn, vulnerable to romance (particularly with her Israeli recruiter, played with subtle conviction by Greek-born Yorgo Voyagis), and Keaton brings sympathetic naivet? to her character's potentially lethal dilemma. Klaus Kinski is arguably miscast as the Israeli intelligence chief, but viewers are more likely to stumble over the film's constant flow of intricate detail. The Little Drummer Girl is not always easy to follow, but attentive viewers will be rewarded, and the plot itself is, sadly, as relevant as ever. --Jeff ShannonEspionage Video
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