Robert Littell’s long reign as an espionage author got an early start with this 1981 novel, which jumped to the big screen that same year, as a tidy little thriller starring John Savage, Christopher Plummer and Marthe Keller.
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| Despite his best efforts, Charlie (Rami Malek) simply lacks the killer instinct required of a good CIA field agent, as his handler, Henderson (Laurence Fishburne) points out. |
Perhaps bearing that in mind, scripters Ken Nolan and Gary Spinelli have retained only the bare bones of Littell’s plot for this remake, while modernizing events with all sorts of computer modeling, surveillance technology and satellite spycraft that didn’t exist in the early 1980s.
Ironically, the result becomes just as unlikely and increasingly contrived, as the solid first act moves into the second and third. That said, director James Hawes and editor Jonathan Amos move events at a briskly enjoyable pace, and everything is anchored by Rami Malek’s richly nuanced and persuasively credible performance.
Charlie Heller (Malek) is a brilliant but deeply shy and introverted CIA decoder, who works in a basement office at the agency’s Langley headquarters. He has three passions in life: his work, his beloved wife Sarah (Rachel Brosnahan) and solving puzzles.
Sarah is his polar opposite: vivacious and outgoing ... but gently understanding and tolerant of Charlie’s preference for isolation. She therefore isn’t surprised when he declines to join her for a trip to London, to attend a conference.
His world collapses, upon arriving for work the next day. His Langley superiors — Moore (Holt McCallany), head of the covert Special Activities Center; and Alice O’Brien (Julianne Nicholson) CIA director — inform him that Sarah has been killed by terrorists who invaded the London conference.
(Even at this moment, when compassion seems called for, McCallany plays his role so aggressively, that he may as well have “Doing And Concealing Bad Stuff” tattooed on his forehead.)
Standing in O’Brien’s office, Charlie wilts like a stalk of old celery. Malek’s performance is shattering: the epitome of loss, grief, shock and a level of rage that has no outlet.
Back at his desk, as the next few days pass, Charlie employs his computer skills to identify and compile detailed dossiers of the four terrorists involved. But when he presents this information to Moore and his close colleague Caleb (Danny Sapani) — head of the CIA’s Nuclear Proliferation branch — Charlie is stunned to discover that a) they already know; and b) apparently aren’t doing anything about it.
Moore threatens Charlie with insubordination, if he doesn’t drop the matter.
Wrong move.
By coincidence — and thanks to a mysterious, heavily encrypted online source dubbed Inquiline — Charlie has gained possession of damning information about unsanctioned covert CIA operations. Armed with some of these documents, he blackmails Moore and Caleb into sending him to “agent training school,” so that he can travel overseas, track down the terrorists, and execute them himself (!).
As an added threat, Charlie promises that — if anything should happen to him, in the meanwhile — copies of said documents will be distributed to major news outlets.
He’s sent for a crash course in field work, under the tutelage of Henderson (Laurence Fishburne), a retired CIA colonel who coldly assesses Charlie’s lack of physical prowess. Even so, Charlie proves quite adept at some tasks — improvising tactical explosives, as one example — but utterly hopeless at even holding a gun, let alone shooting one.
One of Fishburne’s many fine moments concerns the latter, when Henderson challenges Charlie to point a loaded gun at him ... and, despite teeth-gritting effort, he can’t.
“Some people are killers,” Henderson finally says, gently. “You aren’t.”
Charlie eventually heads to London and then — following his own leads — Paris, where he knows how to find the first terrorist.
And we’re off to the races.
Nolan and Spinelli concoct clever — if improbably elaborate — ways for Charlie to proceed with his mission. On the other hand, he doggedly proceeds through unfamiliar locales — eventually including Marseille and Istanbul — like a seasoned tourist, which he obviously isn’t, and always is able to determine exactly where to go.
Setbacks abound, and it’s frankly amazing that no matter how many times Charlie is forced to abandon his equipment — and everything else — he’s always able to buy a fresh set-up, and continues to have money for lodging, meals and so forth.
As if the terrorists aren’t bad enough, he’s soon being followed and attacked from all sides, including the KGB (!). At one point, finally desperate, he reaches out to Inquiline ... about which, I’ll say no more.
The film is saved by the fact that all characters are portrayed convincingly by each member of the large ensemble cast. Malek’s delicately shaded performance contains multitudes; he’s thoroughly engaging in every scene. Charlie veers from stubborn determination to lingering grief, and Malek’s expression is particularly heartbreaking when Charlie keeps “seeing” Sarah at unexpected moments.
“You should go home,” he’s told, at one point.
“I can’t,” he replies, forlornly. “She’s not there.”
Henderson’s transformation from compassionate instructor to implacable pursuer is jarring — but not unexpected — and Fishburne makes the guy quite lethal. Nicholson is terrific as O’Brien, unimpressed by Moore’s glib assurances, and clearly underestimated by him. Jon Bernthal is appropriately mysterious as a field agent dubbed The Bear, who owes a debt to Charlie; Michael Stuhlbarg is chilling as Schiller, the guy who led the London terrorist attack.
The ubiquitous Adrian Martinez is a welcome ray of sunshine as Carlos, one of Charlie’s CIA techie colleagues, and it’s a shame his role wasn’t expanded.
In a droll nod to this film’s 1981 predecessor, Marthe Keller pops up briefly, as a florist.
Hawes and cinematographer Martin Ruhe make ample use of the many international backdrops, none more charming than the fishing community setting that dominates Charlie’s time in Marseille.
Although this obviously is a check-your-brains-at-the-door thrill ride, Malek and his co-stars make it more compelling than the plot deserves.
And, sometimes, that’s enough.
