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Was able to catch this excellent spy thriller tonight and was surprised to see nothing about it here. Carion is the director of the excellent WWI film Joyeaux Noel, and here he casts two other filmmakers as the main protagonists in the Cold War chess match of the early Reagan years. The director Guillaume Canet (Tell No One) plays a french engineer stationed in Moscow who is really forced into the world of espionage by his employer, and becomes the main contact of KGB officer Emir Kusturica (also a director, but I am not familiar with his work) who wishes to help bring down Communism in Russia, and the French and Americans are more than happy to oblige. It's a true story, though names of the main participants are changed apparently.

It's really a wonderful flick, and manages to be thrilling without car chases and shootouts - a welcome reprieve from crap like Salt. Unlike the usual fare, this one just feels real, and is as much a character study as a spy thriller, but balances both quite well. Given the attention The American is getting for being a pseudo-European film that hearkens back to Antonioni, I think this film deserves the same recognition...it's very well done. Willem Dafoe makes an appearance as the head of the CIA, while Fred Ward gives a great turn as Ronnie himself...never would have considered it myself, but he's great without being campy. The scenes where Reagan shows Liberty Valance to his aide is fantastic.

HistoryProf wrote: Emir Kusturica (also a director, but I am not familiar with his work)

Then stop wasting your time with middlebrow Carion and get cracking on Kusturica's films, stat!

recommendation?

You can start anywhere!

R1 - When Father Was Away on Business, Do You Remember Dolly Bell, Underground, Arizona Dream (Warner Archive)

R2 - Black Cat White Cat, Life is a Miracle

Time of the Gypsies I don't think is available

I thought this was a terrific story that was brought down by the direction (I also thought the same about Joyeux Noel). It's not a standard Hollywood thing like Salt, true, but it's filled with all manner of ... well, "middlebrow" is a good word, snobbish as it may be. It feels nothing like "a pseudo-European film that hearkens back to Antonioni" - it feels like something Barry Levinson would have put together in his Disclosure/Sleepers days. It's full of unnecessary dramatic flourishes and groaningly obvious symbolism (the Liberty Valance scenes, although at least he holds off on using the most obvious scene from that movie) and a general feeling that Carion sees this through far more sentimental eyes than anyone involved possibly could have or would want to.

I do agree that Ward is surprisingly effective as Reagan, though. Wouldn't have seen that coming!