John Huston's early films included masterpieces like The Maltese Falcon, The Asphalt Jungle and Treasure of the Sierra Madre. As his career progressed, he made rather too many bad films, among them Phobia, Escape To Victory, and this incomprehensible and miserable spy opus. What is especially dismaying about The Kremlin Letter is that it features a cast to-die-for, and you come away from the film filled with bitter regret that such a great assembly of talent has amounted to so little.
U.S. Navy officer Rone (Patrick O'Neal) is enlisted to recover a government letter stolen by the Russians which contains a potentially catastrophic declaration of war between the U.S. and China. He tracks down some of his old spy buddies to help him with the mission: the Whore (Nigel Green), the Erector Set (Niall MacGinnis), Warlock (George Sanders), and other imaginatively-named spies and assassins. However, the team begin to realise that there is more to the mission than meets the eye as they are picked off one by one. Ultimately, they discover that the letter doesn't even exist and they have all been used as sacrificial pawns in a complex revenge conspiracy.
The film sounds quite interesting and exciting from its synopsis, but the handling is incredibly dull and the plot developments are extraordinarily confusing. The fantastic cast is all but wasted, mainly because none of them get the required screen time to build an interesting character. Worse still, rather than providing subtitles for the occasional foreign dialogue, Huston opts for a totally ineffective "simultaneous dubbing" effect, wherein you can hear the Russian being spoken and its English translation at precisely the same time. This deeply flawed, deeply uninteresting spy film really is one for John Huston completists only. No-one else could possibly find it a worthwhile experience.
U.S. Navy officer Rone (Patrick O'Neal) is enlisted to recover a government letter stolen by the Russians which contains a potentially catastrophic declaration of war between the U.S. and China. He tracks down some of his old spy buddies to help him with the mission: the Whore (Nigel Green), the Erector Set (Niall MacGinnis), Warlock (George Sanders), and other imaginatively-named spies and assassins. However, the team begin to realise that there is more to the mission than meets the eye as they are picked off one by one. Ultimately, they discover that the letter doesn't even exist and they have all been used as sacrificial pawns in a complex revenge conspiracy.
The film sounds quite interesting and exciting from its synopsis, but the handling is incredibly dull and the plot developments are extraordinarily confusing. The fantastic cast is all but wasted, mainly because none of them get the required screen time to build an interesting character. Worse still, rather than providing subtitles for the occasional foreign dialogue, Huston opts for a totally ineffective "simultaneous dubbing" effect, wherein you can hear the Russian being spoken and its English translation at precisely the same time. This deeply flawed, deeply uninteresting spy film really is one for John Huston completists only. No-one else could possibly find it a worthwhile experience.