Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

Good story, Not enough for a whole film

if their story seems completely bonkers, almost like a feverish work of fiction, you ain't heard nothing yet.

Blistering performances.

What a brilliant movie. Spies, lies,twisted mind games. No explosions, no bullets, no exciting background music, no old hat tricks. Inspite of that, or better, because of that, tense, suspenseful and original movie. Real spies are not superheroes, flying through the air, ducking hundreds of bullets, overpowering dozens of villains with their martial arts skills unparalleled in the universe. Most of the time they happen to be, timid or coerced or dedicated to a cause. Their job is not glamorous, they scurry like rats in a dark alley, they sweat and smell,sometimes they live, most of the time they die. Finally the real spy movie, deep and harsh, leaving the sickening feeling. As usual the decent, courageous people get shoved aside or get killed for a higher cause- saving some ambitious creep's ass.

"Keep your money."This is the story of how the Soviet Union lost the game. It is a story based - loosely - on the real story of the man who gave the French enough information to trigger the end of the Cold War.The movie is categorized as a thriller, but it is no ordinary one. It has a good story, a good script, an excellent director and a great cast. The music is moving and the cinematography is beautiful.This is a movie that makes art for art's sake and nothing more. A movie only the Europeans could make. There is no commercial pressure, there is no need to add anything to the plot, or to make the story anything more (or less) than it is. It is the story of the man who wanted to change the world, and who succeeded.The director does a terrific job. The camera walks, runs, flies high and low, in search of the perfect angle, the story moves easily from one point to the next and the attention to detail is overwhelming. There are moments when the action stops and only the camera moves. Combined with a brilliant sound track, the result is a masterpiece.The actors are perfectly selected. Emir Kusturica is the bohemian KGB officer, a role that fits his bearish physique like a glove. Guillaume Canet is the unlikely counterpart and he does a brilliant job. Both man are also accomplished film directors in their own right, and I don't think I've ever seen a movie with main characters like these. They have a special, natural and effortless connection with the camera and with each other, and the film benefits tremendously. The women are there only to make their life difficult and to show how they each deal with their "domestic" problems and weaknesses. But if their roles are small, they do an excellent job.In other roles, there is a cast of who's who of Hollywood. If they would give awards for best supporting cast, this movie would take the cake. Fred Ward is Ronald Reagan, the boss of the United States, Willen Defoe is the boss of the CIA, David Soul has a tiny role and Diane Kruger has a very recognizable cameo appearance.The music is moving, when it is meant to be moving, and simply noise, when it is meant to be nothing else.If there is one flaw that I found, is that the movie repeats itself too much. There are several great ideas and scenes, but they tend to be repeated a lot. Even the greatest idea is a masterpiece only once. The second time it is not so great and the third time it is just... boring. The movie could have been shorter and it could have left some things to the viewer's imagination.There is also the choice of language. There is French, there is Russian and there is English. While the use of all three languages adds to the authenticity of the story, the constant and relentless switching between them gets tiresome, sooner or later. And since the copy I had had no subtitles, some of the Russian dialog remained a mystery. Thank God! there were no Chinese or Japanese involved.Farewell. A great movie, even if a little self-indulgent. 8/10.

Farewell is a spy drama set in Moscow/Russia in the early 1980's. It stars Guillaume Canet and Emir Custarica, both noted directors in their own rights.It is based on real events with the basic story correct though the nature of the two leading characters and a few events are somewhat changed or omitted.The plot centres around the leaking of Russian intelligence to the French government. Sergei (Canet) works for the Russian secret service but has been recruited by (or volunteered to) the French government to pass intelligence data from his office. Sergei is doing this for purely moral reasons arguing that it will one day bring the system down and give his son a better future. His contact is a French engineer working in Moscow, Pierre, coerced in to helping by the French government and operating as Sergei's dropping point. The story develops around the personal relationship between Sergei and Pierre and also that of their families. Sergei is confident and casual but ultimately a little careless. While Pierre becomes paranoid and with his young family in tow begins to feel the stress.The data turns out to industrial espionage on everything from the Space Shuttle to the US defence strategy and even secret communication codes. When the American are shown the information by the French (in a neat piece of one-upmanship) it is only a matter of time before action has to be taken and lives are in danger.The pace is slow and constant and never flat. Tantalisingly delicate, a very light brush from the director allows the actors to communicate in manner rarely seen in Hollywood films. Similar with the cinematography which is used sparingly and always to accentuate the story. Watch out for the early scene where they first meet which simply says 'spies'. Then the scenes of northern Russia in winter.This is a very smart film with excellent understated performances from all the cast. Watch out for several more famous actors in cameo and small roles. Fred Ward playing Ronald Reagan looks positively weird though they get away with it.If you arrived here before viewing be sure, it is well worth watching. Spy Game plus.

A good if a bit talky spy thriller from France that fictionalizes the real case of Vladimir Vetrov, a high ranking spy from the KGB who in the early 1980s and under the code name Farewell gave to the DST, the French internal security service, a massive dossier of files that showed how the Soviets were stealing massively Western technology. The French decided to pass the files to the United States, a convenient thing to do since the Reagan Administration was very suspicious of president François Mitterrand having several communist ministers in his cabinet (Fred Ward has a funny cameo in the movie as Ronald Reagan; Willem Dafoe appears as the CIA director).In the movie Vetrov is called Grigoriev and is played by the famous Serbian director Emir Kusturica. For dramatic reasons, the importance of these files is exaggerated in the movie; they are said to include all sort of things, even diplomatic codes which they did not and the dossier is somehow connected with the decision to announce the Star Wars weapons program. In the film, and since embassy personnel was under surveillance from the KGB, the DST decides to use as a contact with Grigoriev a French engineer working in Moscow for the Thomson firm (who is played by Guillaume Canet as a nervous Woody Allen type guy; Alexandra Maria Lara plays his wife who is obviously shocked when she learns her nerdy husband moonlights as a spy).Directed by Christian Carion, who made the very good World War I drama Joyeux Noel the film is especially fine in the reconstruction of the early 1980s and especially the Soviet Union at the time (Moscow is shown here as surprisingly sunny; if a movie based on this case have been made during the Cold War, Moscow would have looked surely much more gloomy and sinister). A good effort.