The Falcon and the Snowman
Academy Award winner Timothy Hutton (Ordinary People) and Sean Penn ( Dead Man Walking) deliver "superb performances" (Variety) in a true-story spy thriller that is scathing, arresting (The New York Times) and laced with white-knuckle excitement. From Oscar winners John Schlesinger (Midnight Cowboy) and Steven Zaillian (Schindler's List), the film blows the lid off the modern-day American dream with its riveting story of two young men of privilege, money and ambition who end up selling out their country, running their families and destroying their lives.
Chris Boyce (Hutton) works a low-level job at a defense plant where he uncovers documents that prove that the C.I.A. is secretly coercing foreign governments. He confides in his conniving, fast-talking friend, Andrew Daulton Lee (Penn), a reckless drug dealer and user, who convinces him to sell this information to the Soviets for big bucks. Lee boldly cuts a deal with the KGB, but soon the stakes spin out of control as the Soviets up the ante. Lee descends further into drug abuse, and the C.I.A. prepare to take the informants down!
Member Reviews
A Bird Flying Blind In A Snowstorm - CharleyJames
When Christopher Boyce sold his country’s secrets to the Russians during the Cold War, he lost his freedom even before he was caught; he was torn between loyalty to friendship, to a structured system represented by his family and country, and to his own conscious.
Boyce (Timothy Hutton) thinks he’s fighting the system but is really consumed with his own interests. The disillusion America felt in the ‘70s was mired in fear, scandal and tragedy. Kids were protesting the Vietnam war. Struggles for equality of blacks and women marched on. There was the Cold War, a fortress of mistrust and anxiety built over years of political subversion between the superpowers. But it also was a time of discovery: Space, artistic expression and personal choice.
Lost in society, Boyce is without basic beliefs and searching for meaning. He takes a job with access to surveillance satellite communications where Boyce intercepts messages concerning union infiltration and the CIA’s standard “program of denial.” Dismayed by his government’s apparent corruption, Boyce schemes to give Washington its own medicine. He convinces his best friend Daulton Lee (Sean Penn), a hooligan drug dealer and junkie, to arrange selling satellite information to the USSR at its embassy in Mexico.
Screenwriter Steven Zaillian and director John Schlesinger try to humanize Boyce. His relationships are well developed, including with his parents, Lee, coworkers and girlfriend. People trust and like him; we like him. The film provides clues to his disenchantment, but his motives remain murky.
Much is made of the mechanics of spying and in this the movie belongs to Penn, his eyebrow-pencil moustache dissolving in cocaine as he keeps up a front of jittery bravado. Hutton succumbs first to a thin role and then to the film's lack of a strong viewpoint about its leading men. As usual Schlesinger is more than half in love with what he might be satirising.I know it's a true story.... - cathyottawa
....but so much of this still didn't make sense to me.
Christopher goes from studying to enter the priesthood, to conspiring with his drug dealing childhood friend to sell CIA secrets? I didn't see why his character evolved in this way.
To begin with, I didn't really understand how he got his top secret job, and I didn't really understand just what his top secret job was, but somehow he had access to all this highly classified information in no time.
He decides to sell the secrets, seemingly on a whim, because *gasp* he found out the CIA was involved in fixing foreign elections. So this is supposed to be some sort of misguided protest I suppose.
I found it hard to believe these two chuckleheads could fool the CIA for so long.
I did like Sean Penn's character. As the middle man, he's the one in the most danger, and his drug fueled paranoia is gripping to watch.
Overall though, I was left wanting. I don't think this film ever really got to the heart of the Christopher character, or his true motivations.A True Story Well-Told - jon421
A facinating, complex, and intense flick. Gives some key insight into Cold War era politics and alternative interpretations to U.S. rhetoric without losing sight of reality. A balanced, fair treatment of a TRUE STORY. Both Timothy Hutton and Sean Penn deliver superbly. 3.75 stars!
Member Reviews
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A Bird Flying Blind In A Snowstorm - CharleyJames
When Christopher Boyce sold his country’s secrets to the Russians during the Cold War, he lost his freedom even before he was caught; he was torn between loyalty to friendship, to a structured system represented by his family and country, and to his own conscious. ...I know it's a true story.... - cathyottawa
....but so much of this still didn't make sense to me.
Christopher goes from studying to enter the priesthood, to conspiring with his drug dealing childhood friend to sell CIA secrets? I didn't see why his character evolved in this way.
To ...A True Story Well-Told - jon421
A facinating, complex, and intense flick. Gives some key insight into Cold War era politics and alternative interpretations to U.S. rhetoric without losing sight of reality. A balanced, fair treatment of a TRUE STORY. Both Timothy Hutton and Sean Penn deliver ...