The Little Drummer Girl (1984)

Surprisingly incoherent and boring

i must have seen a different film!!

Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

It's 1981 West Germany. Katrin delivers a bomb made by mysterious PLO bomb-maker Khalil killing an Israeli diplomat and his family. Charlie (Diane Keaton) is a naive pro-Palestinian actress. She is in Greece to do a job. When she spots Joseph, she believes him to be the masked Palestinian spokesman whose meeting she attended. He's actually an Israeli Mossad agent and they had taken the real masked man who is Khalil's brother Michel. The whole Greece trip is an Israeli trick. They reveal themselves to her and Martin Kurtz (Klaus Kinski) recruits her to be the brother's girlfriend to infiltrate Khalil's group.John le Carré's brand of espionage stories is often muddled. His world is a murky chaotic vision where questionable things are done which are often not the right course of action. Having said that, I don't understand why the Israelis would ever recruit Charlie. It doesn't make sense to me. I don't see Charlie helping the Israelis or ever believe them enough to really help them. They don't need the recruit to be Jewish, just not anti-Israeli. It might make sense if they pretend to be another terrorist group hoping to connect to Khalil. It's simply hard to understand the Israeli's course of action. Charlie's motivation for her journey is way too twisty. If one can ignore the questionable motivations, the plot is an intriguing twisty affair.

Having read the intriguing novel beforehand, I had looked forward to a film adaption. At that time I always imagined Andrea McArdle a young Broadway stage actress and the original "Annie" was not only the right age but had the look and personality of Charlie as described in the book, might have been a fine "unknown" choice for the role.Sadly, the casting of Diane Keaton was just a disaster. A choice the entire production never could overcome. Although a good actress, Keaton was about 15 years too old for the role of an ingénue who becomes the obsession of a terrorist and her pronounced New York accent was too much at times.The movie follows the novel very closely, perhaps too closely for it's own good. It should nave been about 20 minutes shorter. Still, even at it's full length, the screenplay misses the most interesting moment in the book, where the reader is left to ponder if Charlie has truly joined the "movement" and was ready to kill for the terrorist group she had infiltrated.The actual production seemed a bit on the cheap side. It appears the director wanted a look of reality, but by 80s standards that meant filming on location using real streets with little local activity to get in the way.The rest of the cast, except for Klaus Kinski's star turn is totally forgettable.Finally, over the years I've come to realize The Little Drummer Girl was a story that was best served on the written page. Too much of the story is internalized in Charlie's mind, and that personal struggle is not easily translated to film.

John Le Carre is the master of the spy novel. His stories, including this one, are more into the psychology of the characters than to violence and action. The film is a faithful rendition of the novel. Charlie, an actress, is "recruited" by the Israeli equivalent of our CIA, to cast a net to catch a terrorist. Her role will be to get close to the terrorist by claiming to be the girlfriend of the terrorist's brother. She is pro-Palestinian, so will she play along or not? Does she even want to get involved? It is not obvious as to why Charlie chooses as she does. I think that while she supports the Palestinian cause, she does not condone their bombings. Later, when she gets to know the terrorist responsible for the bombings, she is swayed back towards favoring the terrorists, but perhaps not all the way back. As typical with spy stories, characters are not always who they seem to be, but it isn't that difficult to follow. The only character whose true identity is in question is Charlie, and that is partly the role she is asked to play in the plot and partly her ambivalence and uncertainty as to what she should do.Diane Keaton is excellent as Charlie, and the rest of the cast are also terrific.

A perfect movie.A perfect adaptation of the Cornwell/LeCarre novel. Perhaps the movie might be hard to follow if one had not read the novel; I don't know. A perfect lesson in the War on Terror. As timely as when it was made. Maybe more so.My only complaint: Why no DVD?