Memorable, crazy movie

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

Scary bad acting by Diane Keaton. Her part is awfully cheesy too. The European and Arab actors are very good. Spoiler - Do they ever reveal why it had to be Diane Keaton who drove the red car to Munich? And how did Keaton go from being slapped around by interrogators to walking out of the London subway?The movie contains nice video of Europe and the Mediterranean countries and the depiction of intelligence techniques is very good.

John Le Carré (David John Moore Cornwell) clearly had Judy Davis (not Vanessa Redgrave, as some would maintain) in mind to play the role of Charlie when he wrote Little Drummer Girl.I have been a fan of John Le Carré since his first book, Call for the Dead in 1961. I have read all of his works and I have seen all the TV and movie adaptations. When he writes a book or story he is thinking of certain actors that will (can) bring his characters to life.I must admit that the script and casting for Little Drummer Girl were good enough, however, casting Diane Keaton in a part that was intended for Judy Davis (a powerful actor) destroyed most of the potential of a movie that could have garnered several Academy Awards. Diane Keaton is a nice, sweet little woman, and she was pleasant in Annie Hall, and that is all that she is capable of doing. Diane Keaton playing Charlie, a radical left-wing English actress was absurd and, at best, a travesty, of the original story.It was an ordeal watching Diane Keaton in this movie, missing 90 percent of the potential of the part she was given!

It's been years since I've seen this movie (or read the book, which I did also), and I'm prompted to say something only because I'm reading a new novel, set in Sarajevo, on roughly the same subject, which brings it all to mind. Quite simply, Diane Keaton (whom I like, sometimes) was abysmally miscast, and since the movie turned around her it hadn't a chance. She was too old, too personally quirky, too American. Charlie is a character whose complexity is that of youthful dumbness mixed with superficial knowingness. There are lot of actresses who could have done it (Natasha Richardson might have been one of them, which would certainly have been interesting), but Keaton wasn't one of them.

A perfect movie.A perfect adaptation of the Cornwell/LeCarre novel. Perhaps the movie might be hard to follow if one had not read the novel; I don't know. A perfect lesson in the War on Terror. As timely as when it was made. Maybe more so.My only complaint: Why no DVD?