The Russia House

Artistic production with Sean Connery and Michelle Pfeiffer, but uninteresting spy story

A few years before the fall of the Soviet Union, a boozy English publisher named Barley (Sean Connery) is sent a mysterious manuscript via a beautiful Russian editor named Katya (Michelle Pfeiffer), but it’s intercepted by British intelligence and Barley is coerced into going to Moscow & Leningrad to meet with Katya and the writer of the documents (Klaus Maria Brandauer), which contain technical data that calls into question the quality of the Soviet defense weaponry. Meanwhile both British and American agents (Roy Scheider, James Fox, et al.) surveil Barley’s activities.

Based on John le Carre's novel, "The Russia House" (1990) is a spy drama/romance and NOT an action thriller in the mold of James Bond. Its considerable attributes include spectacular (and rare) on-location work in Russia (shot just a couple years before the fall of the USSR), Jerry Goldsmith's sumptuous jazzy score with Branford Marsalis playing soprano sax and, of course, the notable cast.

The film is aesthetically pleasing and the love story is effective, especially its culmination, but the spy yarn didn’t interest me. This may because I didn’t utilize the subtitles and therefore missed a lot of the highly accented verbiage, which is a mistake when a movie is dialogue-driven, like this one. The depiction of intelligence work is presumably realistic (as opposed to 007), but static, boring, cynical and with little human decency.

Next time I watch it I’ll be sure to use the subtitles.

The film runs 2 hour, 3 minutes, and was shot in Moscow & Leningrad and points nearby; as well as Lisbon, Portugal (Barley’s flat); Bowen Island, British Columbia (American Intelligence 'safe house'); and London (book fair & jazz concert), as well as nearby Pinewood Studios.

GRADE: C+/B-

Sean Connery at least looks like he's having some fun in this otherwise rather dry adaptation of the John Le Carré tale of Cold War espionage. He's "Barley", a publisher who is recruited by MI5 to investigate a secret document sent from the USSR purporting to itemise their nuclear arsenal. Needless to say both the British and their CIA counterparts are wetting themselves at the very thought of this being real, but that needs to be verified - and that's where they recruit "Barley". He travels to Moscow to meet the author, codenamed "Dante" (Klaus Maria Brandauer) and it's whilst there he becomes increasingly distracted by his "editor" (Michelle Pfeiffer) - a woman whom his source claims never to have met! As the plot develops, it becomes clear that strings are being pulled but also that "Barley" is beginning to think on his own, and not necessarily with his brain either. Will he stick to the plan or will he throw a spanner in the works of his Western handlers? It's a solid enough story but it's padded out far too thinly. There's no chemistry between the characters from Connery and Pfeiffer (and her ropey accent) and though there are plenty of red herrings to fuel the intrigue, that's all delivered in a remarkably sterile and disjointed fashion. Le Carré's stories always focussed on detail and this film rather skirts over that in favour of developing the burgeoning romance, and that rather neuters the sense of suspense that's also not really helped by the blandness of James Fox and Roy Scheider. It's watchable, but nobody's finest two hours.