Somewhere in the farmlands of the American Midwest, Katie Phillips, an attractive young female combine-harvester driver, and Gary Simmons, the handsome farmer for whom she works, fall in love. That might make it sound as though that most political of directors, Costa-Gavras, was following in the footsteps of another famously left-wing director, Martin Ritt, and making an apolitical romantic comedy about life in the American boondocks, just as Ritt did with "Murphy's Romance". But, of course, "Betrayed" quickly turns out to be just as political as something like "Z" or "The Missing".
Katie is really an FBI spy named Catherine Weaver, on a mission to infiltrate a neo-Nazi terrorist group suspected of the murder of a controversial Chicago Jewish radio host. (For the sake of consistency I will refer to her as "Katie" throughout). At first she is convinced that Gary, a widower with two young children, is really the pillar of the community he appears at first sight, a decorated Vietnam War veteran and a regular churchgoer. But of course, it quickly turns out that that Gary is as guilty as hell, and a leading light in the activities of the terrorist gang. To make matters more complicated, Katie's FBI controller Michael Carnes is her former lover and still appears to have feelings for her.
Which effectively makes "Betrayed" an unacknowledged remake of Hitchcock's "Notorious". That film is also about a love-triangle involving a beautiful undercover agent trying to infiltrate a gang of Nazis, one of the members of that gang and one of her fellow agents. There are, however, a couple of important differences in the story. In "Betrayed" Katie is quite genuinely in love with Gary until she realises his true nature; although Michael may still have feelings for her, she no longer seems interested in him. By falling for Gary and sleeping with him Katie is going beyond her brief; the FBI never ordered her to seduce him. In "Notorious", by contrast, the equivalent character, Alicia, is under instructions not only to seduce the Nazi leader Alex Sebastian but even to marry him. He falls in love with her, but Alicia is in love with the Michael-figure, Devlin.
The French title for this film was "La Main Droite du Diable", a direct translation of the title of Steve Earle's song "The Devil's Right Hand", which features prominently on the soundtrack in the version by Waylon Jennings. Its use here might have been ironic; the song's anti-gun lyrics contrast sharply with the attitude of Gary and his fellow-extremists who generally despise all parts of the American Constitution apart from the Second Amendment thereto. I wondered if that might have been a good English-language title, but I think that "Betrayed" is a better one because this is very much a film about betrayal. Katie is betrayed by Gary, who leads her to believe that he is an upright, law-abiding citizen. Gary is betrayed by Katie, who allows him to fall in love with her without revealing that she is a "grasshopper", as his group call spies and informers. She in turn is in a sense betrayed by Michael and his colleagues, who have no compunction about sending her into danger, and more directly betrayed by a mole within the FBI who revels her identity to the terrorists. And all the time Gary and his associates are betraying the country they profess to love. This is a film which calls for good acting, and which gets it, especially from Debra Winger as the conflicted Katie and from om Berenger as Gary, the all-American boy involved in some very un-American activities. Special mention goes to young Maria Valdez as Gary's little daughter Rachel.
"Betrayed" is not, however, really one of my favourites, largely because some of the elements of the plot. There is a particularly shocking scene where Gary invites Katie to come "hunting" with him and some friends. They are not, however, hunting animals. They have kidnapped a black man and force him to run for his life while they hunt him down; the hunt ends with him being shot dead. What is never explained is why Garys assume that Katie will be happy to join in this activity. He might have no reason to suspect that she is a "grasshopper", but neither does he have any reason to believe that she shares his extremist views and will not inform the police. Neither is it really explained why, after a horrified Katie reports this incident to her FBI handlers, they do not immediately move in and arrest Gary and his associates. They have clear eye-witness evidence that the men are guilty of murder, but seem more concerned with nailing the gang for killing the radio host. If more innocent black people have to die in the meantime, that's just too bad. They even encourage Katie to take part in the gang's criminal activities, such as a bank raid during which she shoots and injures a security guard.
Roger Ebert wrote of the film that "Here were people I believed in, involved in a story that no one could believe in", which would sum up my own feelings, except that the elements I complain of above are more than just plot-holes. They are actually serious enough to call the film's political themes into question. Are Costa-Gavras and his scriptwriter Joe Eszterhas defending the FBI as heroic defenders of American democracy against terror? Or are they effectively painting them as an out-of-control secret police, morally little different from the political extremists they are combating? A film which cannot answer questions like those is always going to leave viewers with an uneasy feeling. 7/10.
Katie is really an FBI spy named Catherine Weaver, on a mission to infiltrate a neo-Nazi terrorist group suspected of the murder of a controversial Chicago Jewish radio host. (For the sake of consistency I will refer to her as "Katie" throughout). At first she is convinced that Gary, a widower with two young children, is really the pillar of the community he appears at first sight, a decorated Vietnam War veteran and a regular churchgoer. But of course, it quickly turns out that that Gary is as guilty as hell, and a leading light in the activities of the terrorist gang. To make matters more complicated, Katie's FBI controller Michael Carnes is her former lover and still appears to have feelings for her.
Which effectively makes "Betrayed" an unacknowledged remake of Hitchcock's "Notorious". That film is also about a love-triangle involving a beautiful undercover agent trying to infiltrate a gang of Nazis, one of the members of that gang and one of her fellow agents. There are, however, a couple of important differences in the story. In "Betrayed" Katie is quite genuinely in love with Gary until she realises his true nature; although Michael may still have feelings for her, she no longer seems interested in him. By falling for Gary and sleeping with him Katie is going beyond her brief; the FBI never ordered her to seduce him. In "Notorious", by contrast, the equivalent character, Alicia, is under instructions not only to seduce the Nazi leader Alex Sebastian but even to marry him. He falls in love with her, but Alicia is in love with the Michael-figure, Devlin.
The French title for this film was "La Main Droite du Diable", a direct translation of the title of Steve Earle's song "The Devil's Right Hand", which features prominently on the soundtrack in the version by Waylon Jennings. Its use here might have been ironic; the song's anti-gun lyrics contrast sharply with the attitude of Gary and his fellow-extremists who generally despise all parts of the American Constitution apart from the Second Amendment thereto. I wondered if that might have been a good English-language title, but I think that "Betrayed" is a better one because this is very much a film about betrayal. Katie is betrayed by Gary, who leads her to believe that he is an upright, law-abiding citizen. Gary is betrayed by Katie, who allows him to fall in love with her without revealing that she is a "grasshopper", as his group call spies and informers. She in turn is in a sense betrayed by Michael and his colleagues, who have no compunction about sending her into danger, and more directly betrayed by a mole within the FBI who revels her identity to the terrorists. And all the time Gary and his associates are betraying the country they profess to love. This is a film which calls for good acting, and which gets it, especially from Debra Winger as the conflicted Katie and from om Berenger as Gary, the all-American boy involved in some very un-American activities. Special mention goes to young Maria Valdez as Gary's little daughter Rachel.
"Betrayed" is not, however, really one of my favourites, largely because some of the elements of the plot. There is a particularly shocking scene where Gary invites Katie to come "hunting" with him and some friends. They are not, however, hunting animals. They have kidnapped a black man and force him to run for his life while they hunt him down; the hunt ends with him being shot dead. What is never explained is why Garys assume that Katie will be happy to join in this activity. He might have no reason to suspect that she is a "grasshopper", but neither does he have any reason to believe that she shares his extremist views and will not inform the police. Neither is it really explained why, after a horrified Katie reports this incident to her FBI handlers, they do not immediately move in and arrest Gary and his associates. They have clear eye-witness evidence that the men are guilty of murder, but seem more concerned with nailing the gang for killing the radio host. If more innocent black people have to die in the meantime, that's just too bad. They even encourage Katie to take part in the gang's criminal activities, such as a bank raid during which she shoots and injures a security guard.
Roger Ebert wrote of the film that "Here were people I believed in, involved in a story that no one could believe in", which would sum up my own feelings, except that the elements I complain of above are more than just plot-holes. They are actually serious enough to call the film's political themes into question. Are Costa-Gavras and his scriptwriter Joe Eszterhas defending the FBI as heroic defenders of American democracy against terror? Or are they effectively painting them as an out-of-control secret police, morally little different from the political extremists they are combating? A film which cannot answer questions like those is always going to leave viewers with an uneasy feeling. 7/10.