Why so much hype?

One of my all time favorites.

A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

Sean Connery is a publisher and saxophone player swept up in Cold War antics as an agent trying to smuggle scientific secrets of some sort out of Russia and into the West.I never liked the soprano saxophone. I don't know why it exists. It's usually too shrill and is associated with supermarkets, cheap commercials, and Kenny G. Why isn't the clarinet good enough, hey? This is one sluggish movie and a bit complicated, as the author's plots tend to be. It's redeemed by the shenanigans of the CIA/MI5 or MI6, a group of puppeteers behind Connery and his contact, Michelle Pfeiffer, led by a hot-headed Roy Scheider and a dry, ironic James Fox. J. T. Walsh -- my co-star in the superlative "Windmills of the Gods", or what it "Rage of Angels?", I forget -- is the ironbound US Army officer who suspects everyone of being a ComSymp and wants to bomb them all -- "a hard-head from the ***hole up," as someone describes him.They put Connery through a lie detector test to make sure he's not a commie, and the scene puts on display the movie's most charming feature -- its witty screenplay.The wily interrogators ask Connery about his politics, his motives, his past. "Have you ever associated with any musicians with known anarchist tendencies?" Connery frowns thoughtfully. "Well, there was one trombone player. Willie Brown was his name. He was the only musician I've ever known who was completely devoid of any anarchist tendencies." The performances are uniformly good, even Roy Scheider who seems about to stroke out at any moment and who shouts scatological imprecations. I think the role calls for it. I can't understand why all the men are so awfully sun tanned though. The weather in Moscow and St. Petersberg are about what we can expect -- more clouds of gray than any Russian play could guarantee.The photography of Russian cities and their monuments is memorable.

I read John LeCarre's book and I never thought a movie version could be as boring, but somehow, it was.Sean Connery is expectedly appealing, but one can tell he only did this movie so he could get a free trip to Russia. Michelle Pfeiffer is cute, though she appears to have bitten off more than she can chew here. Nice Russian cityscapes, but the musical soundtrack drones on endlessly in the background. It would be difficult to recommend this film over LeCarre's novel - both are convoluted. One of those flicks where you can fall asleep for 10 minutes and then wake up with the feeling that you haven't missed anything. Snooze City.

Directed by Fred Schepisi, "The Russia House" should be more like "The Russia Bore". It is a failure of a story with ultra-slow pacing and devoid of needed tension. I seem to recall this coming to the theater and reading a drubbing by critics at the time. That drubbing is likely warranted. The only redeeming factor here in a small way is the inter-cut and backdrop shots of Moscow and Leningrad. It feels much like a travelogue, and although dated over 20 years ago, has a historical and almost rustic feel. But this isn't nearly enough. Some other problems are the complete lack of romance/chemistry between Michelle Pheiffer and Connery, easily old enough to be her Father. The whole espionage vantage feels punch-less. And the music is monotonous and tacky. Can't recommend it, although there are certainly worse movies out there. 5/10

She not only does the accent, she looks the part. Michelle Pfeiffer as a Russian woman makes this Cold War tale retain its interest, and as for Sean Connery, for once he has an actual rounded character to play, complete with eccentricities, and he does it splendidly. This is a highly successful adaptation of a John le Carre novel. Of course it is all predicated on the menace of the Cold War, even though there is much talk of 'glasnost', photos of Gorbachev are now hanging on the walls, and things are meant to be loosening up in Russia. (In fact this was the first Western film ever made there.) But the Soviet Union still exists, so that this is one of the last big spy movies based upon the Soviet threat. With this film, John le Carre's spy world went out not with a whimper but with a bang. It is a rattling good tale, and well worth the watch today. The supporting actors are very good: Roy Scheider, Klaus Maria Branauer, James Fox, Michael Kitchen, Ken Russell (yes, the director), David Threlfall, and others. Russell gets a bit hysterical in some of his scenes, but one would expect that from him. Brandauer has his usual magnetic intensity. Kitchen is cozy, like the sort of thing you sit in for your cuppa tea. The story itself does have some inert elements, since a group of spy masters sitting around in a control room getting remote signals all the time from Moscow is hard to make dynamic, no matter how many snide remarks they keep making to each other, and how much artificial tension is generated by ambiguous signals which confuse and worry them. One could easily pick no end of holes in the plot. But why should one? The film overcomes all these weaknesses and carries us right along. Somebody somewhere has forgotten how to make good spy stories simply, and the ones being made at the moment are generally too 'busy', leaving little room to breathe between surprises, and characters are too often two-dimensional. Here the two leads are not only written in the round (a clever script by Tom Stoppard helps!), they are played in the round by two real pros. Fred Schepisi does a wonderful job of directing. All good fun, and it really takes you back. It seems only yesterday that Red Square inspired more fear by far than the wastes of Waziristan, or whatever pale substitute for fear we are meant to be quivering about today. This film was shot on location in Lisbon, Moscow, and St. Petersburg (then still Leningrad), and there is a lot of magnificent cinematography, so that the film is partly a travelogue showing us glimpses of wonderful things. It is such a shame that they had to cut away from some of those shots in the interests of the storyline and not linger over them, such as the amazing roof in Lisbon and some glimpses of the Russian countryside, which are so tantalizingly brief.