The Deadly Recruits (1986)

Best movie of this year hands down!

Good concept, poorly executed.

Don't Believe the Hype

It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

I allow for the fact that this film is 30-year old British television, that TV budgets of said era were cut-rate an that we've new international concerns today. But some/many of the scenes in D-R were laughable. A Russian spy "shadows" a British agent by walking 20 yards behind him in open countryside. Rookie rabbit hunters later 'bag" the Russian. Protesters chant to empty space then participate in a sissy-slap riot. Worse, subplots and characters go nowhere; e.g., the guru and the crutches guy. Our "hero" imagines himself James Bond but is closer to Mr. Bean. The score appears provided by an adolescent garage band. We know of the Philby & Co. background to British espionage, but this is, at best, exploitive of such. I dare you to make it to the end of this movie

Terence Stamp excels in this British made for TV movie about an Oxford professor who doubles as a British intelligence agent. His assignment in this film is to find out about a possible new generation of Philbys, MacLeans, Burgesses and Blunts coming out of the highest halls of Academia in Great Britain.Ever since his exposure in America we've never ceased the debate as to how Alger Hiss who was establishment personified could have possibly found the Soviet Union attractive enough to turn traitor and spy for them. Ditto in Great Britain where several people just earmarked for positions of great authority in the establishment of that country turned traitor and in fact defected on discovery. Those names mentioned above are still a tender subject in the United Kingdom.So when a young and promising Oxford student dies in a mysterious motorcycle crash Stamp goes in to investigate. He finds a new generation of sleeper agents just waiting to be sprung on British establishment. In fact the recently deceased young man was a total phony and we're not sure where he originated from. Coming out as it did in 1986 the film is a bit of an anachronism because as Stamp correctly points out the Soviet Union is having its own student issues. But the film was remarkably prescient in pointing that out as the Sovierts collapsed within a decade.Without knowing about the agents in the establishment that I've mentioned Deadly Recruits does lose a bit of impact for an American audience. Still it's an interesting work.

English author Anthony Price wrote a string of 19 well-crafted novels dealing with espionage, published 1970/1989, within which are depicted adventures of an Oxford University Professor of history, with a specialty in Arabic, Dr. David Audley, whose exertions doubling as a British intelligence agent during the Cold War for the United Kingdom's Ministry of Defence were related in an esteemed series made for television, "Chessgame". This engrossing feature film, having as its source the third novel in the group, "Colonel Butler's Wolf", is an interesting tale having virtually no padding. A growing number of academically superior Oxford students are experiencing either defamation, leading to expulsion, or sudden violent death, and a veteran Master at the University, an erstwhile spy, requests for Audley (Terence Stamp) to assist in the affair because he fears that the KGB is behind the tragic incidents, as a method of destroying a breeding ground for Western intelligence operatives. Audley is initially skeptical, but soon begins to believe that the astute Master is, indeed, on to something sinister, and he thereupon decides to intertwine his own wife, Faith (Carmen du Sautoy) with his customary staff in an unconventional and hazardous endeavour to overcome the Soviet Forces of Evil. This is the final of three features released in conjunction with "Chessgame", and although it is less effective than the best of the trio, COLD WAR KILLERS (1986), it nonetheless profits from a largely realistic and intelligent screenplay, efficient leadership from director Roger Tucker, and first-class editing by Paul Griffiths-Davies. As with each entry within the extended Audley canon of Price, whichever the format, all of the primary characters are participants in a riskful game, the ground rules of which devolve upon a single gambit: that of acquiring more information than one must divulge, with a result that double and triple crosses are recurrent. The designing by James Weatherup is appropriate as ever, and minimalist scoring of Christopher Gunning contributes strongly to the film's sequences of suspense. Each member of the cast is competent, with Stamps, du Sautoy and Michael Culver all excellent, as will be expected.

DEADLY RECRUITS is an unusual and unexpectedly intelligent spy thriller made for British television. A motorcycle accident leads two government agents to investigate a series of disappearances from among the best and brightest students at Oxford University. The case takes some unexpected twists. The plot can be a little hard to follow at times and requires careful attention as well as a nodding acquaintance with British slang on occasions. There is also some nice dry English wit. The cast is good, particularly Michael Culver, a familiar face from films including THUNDERBALL and THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK. Terence Stamp plays a most irritating government agent. Also look for Art Malik as a student.