Die Damaskus Verschwörung - Spion zwischen den Fronten

So bland. Very poor acting at times. It sounds like they're reading their lines. A slow, meandering pace. I'm writing this review as I'm watching it because I'm bored.

This is a quite mediocre spy movie. I used to like this genre a lot and would have the keenest interest to see them through, but this film, well, right after about 15 minutes, I've already got bored, lost my interest and became awfully impatient to watch along. During the fifteen minutes, I've first found out that the casting job was terrible; Jonathan Rhys Meyers, who played the main role as an Israeli spy, was a terrible cast, I couldn't stand his swaggering walking and his faulty ridiculed way of speaking, trying to be a mixture of German and Israeli person. Then again, Olivia Thirlby, who played a USA Today journalist, shooting pictures of those Israeli weirdos around the Weeping Wall without any obvious reason. Then an absolutely weak and unconvincing chaos was so conveniently created and suddenly died down to offer the opportunity for her and JRM's acquaintance. What an awkward and terrible scenario that only a lousy screenplay would have crafted. Then finding and signing up lot of Middle Eastern actors with big hooked noses and demonic vicious faces to play the Syrians simply further turned me off right away.

It's such an one-dimensional and highly predictable film, extremely mediocre. The only thing that worths your time was to take a look at those exotic scenes of the Middle Eastern city and village views, which by the same token, we've already seen thousand times in other films, including those travel documentary films and magazines. I'd never recommend you to waste your precious time to watch this mediocre film.

In spite of sporting a decent cast Damascus Cover, fails to impress. This is what I would describe as a "template film". It takes a standardised formula that been used many times before and adds in actors, props and sets, along with rather conventional narrative.

The result is a shallow contrivance that lacks flair, corralling the actors performance's, offering little in the way of character growth and artistic improvisation. This is a genuine shame too, as there is some real talent in this cast, including I believe the final performance by the truly wonderful John Hurt.

Just as regrettable is this film seems intent on portraying Syria as a haven for human rights abusers, torturers and escaped Nazi's. The latter hob nob with senior Syrian officials, whilst living the high life in Damascus. Whilst indeed there was a senior Nazi residing in Syria, he was not feted by the government but instead died whilst effectively under house arrest.

Simply put there is not a lot to like here. I watched all of this film but found I was bored a good portion of the time by its overall blandness and lack of objectivity. Suffice to say there are far far better espionage thrillers on offer than this tepid affair. 4/10 from me.

I was able to watch it all the way through without regret, which is more than I can say for most movies these days. Nothing great, but not that bad either. I found the sound track kind of weird, the dialogue was so crisp and clear I almost thought it was looped, but I am not sure. It sounded like the mics were almost in the mouth of the characters as they spoke. Kind of off-putting.

Seeing 4.5 IMDB rating, I didn't have much hope for this movie when I sat down to watch it. But i should have known better than to trust IMDB ratings. That's not a knock on the website, but more on the crazy ratings some people give movies on here.

This is a well-made, well-shot, well-acted movie. It isn;t the most original plot ever, but then that is true of most movies and doesn;t automatically make it bad. Indeed, the twist at the end was unexpected, and I'm usually pretty good at working such plot twists out.

JRM does a good job in the lead role and the rest of the supporting cast are also very good. Any movie that features Igal Naor is a winner, too. He is such a good, engaging character actor and really should get more work in bigger movies.

So, this is a well-made movie and we should all be supporting indie movie makers these days, with the big studios squashing the little guys. This movie is well worth watching.