Spoonatects Am i the only one who thinks........Average?

StyleSk8r At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

Tayloriona Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

Haven Kaycee It is encouraging that the film ends so strongly.Otherwise, it wouldn't have been a particularly memorable film

kindtxgal Fine cast of actors playing their parts incredibly well, particularly Orson Welles and George Sanders as a drag queen/American agent. The scene with him knitting booties is absolutely priceless, having seen him and known his work with thriller genre / Bette Davis flicks of the Golden Era of Hollywood. However, I watched this film through once, then skim-watched it again a second time trying to ascertain the plot and some of the scenes relevancy, and I just couldn't thread it all together. Too many scenes plunked in with no tie in or tie out for that matter...apparently wanting the viewer to be able to piece it all together. Which I really couldn't for the most part. And that ending! Horrendous! Catch it on FXM and save the rental wait time. It's just too steeped in a cacophony of scenes that rarely thread together in any way shape or form. And who are the folks in the masks? That is unanswered as well.

bkoganbing In the Citadel Film series book on The Films Of John Huston the author says that the reason that the film flopped was that the lead actor Patrick O'Neal was overwhelmed by the colorful supporting cast that Huston put together. It certainly was a formidable array of talent, topped off by George Sanders as an outrageous old drag queen. The Kremlin Letter is also compared unfavorably to The Maltese Falcon in that Humphrey Bogart more than held his own against a similarly colorful cast. I'm not sure O'Neal was overwhelmed, but the story might have been a bit tricky to follow. O'Neal is a naval officer detached from the service to join the CIA where he comes under the control of Richard Boone and Dean Jagger. He's to become part of a team that has to get a hold of an indiscreet letter written by a KGB man trying to get the USA to side with the USSR against the People's Republic of China. The Chinese might do more than just embarrass certain folks if they get their hands on it.Most of the team dies and the mission is not all that it seems. Still O'Neal carries on and what was intended to really be accomplished is. Still O'Neal is left with a real ethical dilemma in the end. And espionage as he finds is a business without ethics.This film could have been another The Spy Who Came In From The Cold, but falls way short of that classic. I think too many balls were in the air for the viewer to follow. Still a chance to see George Sanders in drag should not be missed.

sol1218 ****SPOILERS**** Confusing mess of as movie that centers around this letter that if its contents become know to the Communist Chinese Government it could very well spark a third world War between China and the US and USSR. What the letter is all about is a promise from a top member,very probably the head man, of the CIA that the US will join the USSR in an attack on the Chinese Communist nuclear facilities in a joint military operation when the time is right.As the movie slumbers along the letter becomes less and less important to the plot with the guy put in charge of getting the letter US Government Super Secret Agent Charles Rone, Patrick O'Neal, finding better things to do like become a male hustler in Moscow and getting acquainted with the Soviet sadistic counter-intelligence head Col. Kosnov, Max Von Sydow, oversexed wife Erika, Bibi Anderson. Erika is dying to leave the USSR and start a new life in the free world Western Europe or the good Ol' USA. And in the end Erika has half her wish, the dying part, come true!Rone was was drummed out of the US Navy with an dishonorable discharge as a cover for his new job as a US Super Secret Agent has retired US Government Agent ward, Richard Boone, show him the ropes in what's expected of him which is meeting up with a number of ex-government agents all round the world to coordinate the operation in keeping the letter,"The Kremlin Letter", from getting into the hands of the Communist Chinese Government. Which by the time the film is less then half over the mysterious letter is almost completely forgotten about only to resurface later in the hands of the Communist Chinese at a Pieking post office dead letter unit where no one there, in the post office as well as Communist Chinese Government, takes it seriously thinking that it some kind of a prank by the CIA or British I5 to create friction between the two communist super powers!Boring movie that you need an entire bottle of NoDoz to gulp down in order to stay awake to watch it from beginning to end. There's so many side plots in the film that at one point I thought that I was watching at least a half dozen different movies at the same time. ***SPOILERS***Agent Rone who by the time he finally gets the hang of it, his secret assignment, gets himself romantically involved with super safe cracker Elector Set's, Niall MacGinnis, daughter B.A (Barbara Perkins), who can crack safes with her feet as well as hands, that in the end backfires on him with her being used as a hostage in order to have him do what he was really recruited for to do in the first place! A hit job back in New York City that has nothing to do with what he thought he was in the movie for in the first place: "The Kremlin letter"! Talking about changing horses in the middle or a race!P.S There's also a cameo appearance, like in an Alfred Hitchcock movie, in the film by it's director John Huston playing someone called the Admiral as well as Orson Wells as the guy who's really pulling the strings in the film as Soviet Central Committee honcho Bresnavitch. But the person who really steals the show is George Sanders as Warlock a San Francisco transvestite who likes to nit red, Communist red, stockings in his spear time. Sanders or Warlock ended up being thrown out of his Moscow apartment window when it was decided by his handlers, the CIA?, that he had outlived his usefulness which couldn't have statued, in Sanders finally exiting this dull as dishwater film, him more!

TVPowers An absolutely diabolical cold war spy thriller. Directed by John Huston, with a mostly all-star cast, it's offbeat, grim, brutal, sexually frank (if far from PC these days)-- and rather bloody for its time.Patrick O'Neal seems at first glance a bit older than the Rone character should be, but a line of dialog indicates service in Korea. So perhaps this correct, and the passions he seems to elicit from the younger female characters are part of the book. Speaking of which, it's based on the novel by Noel Behn, who had served in the real-world Army Counter-Intelligence Corps. The print I saw on TCM was extremely crisp and clear, I didn't notice any graininess. The sound seemed fine, although the over-dubbed Russian to English bit did seem like a misstep at first.