The Russia House (1990)

Directed by Fred Schepisi. Starring Sean Connery, Michelle Pfeiffer, James Fox, Roy Scheider, Klaus Maria Brandeur, Michael Kitchen, David Threlfall, John Mahoney, J. T. Walsh, Nicholas Woodeson, Mac McDonald. [R]

Muddled, slow-moving spy drama, adapted by Tom Stoppard from the John le Carré novel, laboring over the authenticity of a manuscript slipped to book publisher Connery, as well as his loyalties and those of mysterious Russian beauty Pfeiffer and scientist Brandeur. No faulting its verisimilitude in capturing the plodding drudgery of the intelligence community, but such undeviating tedium surely could have been translated with a little more gusto. Connery plays up the drinking and candidness, Pfeiffer plays up the accent and incandescence, but neither bring enough color to their roles to make them memorable beyond the point the credits roll; their fates also lack resonance, no matter how much director Schepisi distends the swell of personal optimism toward the end. The first American film permitted to be filmed at length on location in the crumbling Soviet Union (Red Heat, from 1988, captured a few authentic images of Red Square, but the rest of the Russian scenes were shot elsewhere).

46/100