Operation Manhunt

In 1945, Harry Townes was a spy at the Soviet Embassy in Ottawa. One day he walked out with papers that put an end to Soviet attempts to steal American and Canadian (?) atomic secrets. Now he lives near Montreal with his wife and children. He writes books about the evils of the Soviet Union; his sole contact is his publisher Robert Goodier.

Of course the Soviets want him, to serve as an example of what happens when they are betrayed. Jacques Aubuchon has just shown up. It is his assignment to smoke out Townes by claiming he wants to defect, but only if he can meet with Townes. And so the rest of the movie becomes a cat-and-mouse game between Soviet and Canadian agents, with the question about whether Aubuchon is trying to bring Townes in to the Soviets or kill him -- or whether he actually wants to defect. Much of it is shot in Montreal.

Townes plays Igor Gouzenko, whose real-life defection was one of the triggers of the Cold War. Whether the story is true or fiction or somewhere in between is not clear. Someone speaking with a heavy accents, his head covered in a pillowcase, and claiming to be Gouzenko speaks at the end of the movie.

Igor Gouzenko (Harry Townes) has defected from the Soviet Union and is hiding in Canada. He's been very helpful by giving information to the Canadian authorities and the Soviets are furious about this. So, they've placed a contract out on him and have brought an agent in to find and kill Gouzenko. At the same time, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police are trying to protect him and are concerned about assassination. Can they manage to stop this killer or will Gouzenko soon be the victim of the old USSR.

This is just an okay film. It's because you expect a lot more action and excitement from such a movie and its pace is pretty slow. However, it does make it more realistic...just not as cinematic. Watchable but it sure could be better.

This film was planned as a documentary, and its style is definitely documentary all the way, sticking carefully to actual details, everything being filmed on location in Ottawa and Montreal, so there is little space left for acting and cinematography, although Harry Townes portrays Gouzenko very well and makes him perfectly convincing, something between Henry Fonda and Mel Ferrer; and the documentary strictness makes the film notable for meticulous and impeccable realism. This is a sequel to the vitally important "The Iron Curtain" seven years earlier with Dana Andrews and Gene Tierney, which carefully told the whole story of the drama of the defection, so this is valuable as a compliment to that film carefully exposing the consequences of the drama and why Gouzenko practically for the rest of his life had to continue appearing masked whenever he had to make a public performance or put himself visibly at risk.

I know next to nothing about the merits of Director Jack Alexander, but on the evidence of watching OPERATION MANHUNT I must sadly concede that only the very clear and focused B&W photography stayed with me. Albeit simple, straight forward cinematography by Benoit Jobin and Akos Arkas, you get to see the architectural beauty of Ottawa and Montreal, and facial closeups are well done.

That plus aside, there is no much to recommend this film: the actors struck me as rather amateurish, their delivery contrived and wooden, and the script kept repeating the status of Gouzenko. Not that there was excessive dialogue, but far too many sequences with actors strolling around cold streets do nothing to prevent some monotony setting in.

A script short of ideas and seemingly not sure where it is heading cannot possibly serve any film well - OPERATION suffers from it and a quite a few other shortcomings., including some 10-15 minutes longer than it needed to be.

I doubt I will revisit it. 6/10.

It's better to read books on this subject...the extra DVD textual material about the life of the real Gouzenko was the best part. I found myself skipping through some talky parts about 40 minutes into it. It has a docudrama style of direction which gets tiresome. The actors playing the Soviets are a bit stiff, but Harry Townes as the defector Igor Gouzenko is good.

Definitely something you have to be in the right mood for. If you like spy stuff, be warned this is no James Bond adventure but rather an apparently fact-based account of an international incident. It's set ten years after Gouzenko's defection to Canada with top-secret Soviet documents in hand.

Good for its type but I can see how it would quickly disinterest a large percentage of viewers.