Le sursis

Spy escapades riddled with double crosses and triple crosses were all the rage in the '60s and '70s, and this is Peter Collinson's belated addition to the genre. An uninspired and very routine espionage yarn, set (and filmed) in Israel, The Sell-Out is preposterously hard-to-follow at times but it would be wrong to dismiss it as a complete failure. It may not be especially good, but the performances are competent enough and the climactic chase sequence is moderately exciting.

Elderly ex-spy Sam Lucas (Richard Widmark) lives in Jerusalem with the much younger Deborah (Gayle Hunnicutt). He likes to think he has left the spy business behind, and he now runs a successful antiquities store. However, he is forced back into action when he receives a call for help from his old protege Gabriel Lee (Oliver Reed). Lee defected to the East some years previously, but has now become the target on a clandestine CIA-KGB death list. His only chance of getting out of Israel alive is to plead for the help of his old pal Lucas, even though it will mean re-igniting long-buried tensions and emotions.

There have been so many films of this ilk that The Sell-Out struggles to come up with anything fresh or interesting. Widmark is likable as the reluctant hero and Reed gets to put in some moody posturing as the enigmatic defector. Director Collinson cuts back on the hard-hitting violence that characterises many of his earlier films (there's violence in this one, but nothing in the same league as Fright or Open Season). The Sell-Out is a very formulaic film, never so bad that you feel like turning it off but never so good that you feel the urge to watch it again. Everyone involved has done better.... and worse.

A pretty good cast with lots of delightful bad guys. But what's the point. Who's who and what do they want? That's the problem. This is a mishmash of intrigue and espionage where we can't tell the characters without a program. We assume we are pulling for Richard Widmark and Oliver Reed, but we can't be sure. What makes a real spy story work is knowing the real milieu that is put forward. If everyone is flip-flopping back and forth within the story and if we don't have an identifiable end, we can't sense the suspense. I just couldn't get into this film. I like Reed and Widmark; they are two wonderful actors, but this must have been thrown together. The pyrotechnics are laughable. They use the old rule, if you can't come up with a plot, use a bunch of car chases. When all is said and done, who are these people answerable to. Is he CIA corrupt or is there a visible entity for us to fear. If there is, it's never brought forward in this film.

"The Sell Out" has an overall rating of 4.9 on IMDB...indicating it's NOT a very good film. However, something needs to be taken into account...nearly HALF the ratings for this film are 10s!!! Clearly, when a bad or even mediocre movie gets this many 10s, someone or group of people are messing with the ratings. IMDB must have realized this and weighted the scores, as with so many 10s I cannot explain why the movie still has such a low overall score.

"The Sell Out" is an international production with a couple past their peak big-name actors, Richard Widmark and Oliver Reed. Otherwise, you won't recognize most of the actors...and as I watched, I could understand why they won't be recognized...they, like the director, just aren't very good.

The story is a convoluted and talky story about a former CIA agent (Widmark) and a double-agent (Reed). The double-agent says he wishes to return to the NATO fold...but for some reason both sides want to kill him and the former CIA agent. Why and what are they hiding?

This is an extremely cheap and low energy film...despite being about spies and murder. It's not bad enough to merit scores like 1 or 2...but isn't much better than that. I REALLY found myself struggling to pay attention or even care about this film...and it's interesting how dull they managed to make the production.

In this work filmed entirely in Israel, Richard Widmark gamely portrays Sam Lucas, a "retired" CIA operative who discovers that he is involuntarily back in action due to the sudden urging of his former initiate Gabriel Lee (Oliver Reed) who has been turned by the Soviet Union and now wants to come back into the American fold, not realizing that both players in the game have sent assassins to Israel to eliminate him, and Lucas as well. The direction is flabby with undue emphasis being placed upon silly and, naturally, superfluous stunts and car chases, with an inappropriate free hand being given to Gayle Hunnicut, playing the wife of Lucas and former lover of Lee, whose melodramatism proves distortive for what should be the critical scenes in this leaden affair, while the pudgy Englishman Reed, ill-advised to strip to the waist, has his lines dubbed in order to present an acceptable American accent.

Poor old Ollie Reed is having a bit of an holiday in Israel when someone tries to kill him... It turns out that he used to run the CIA operation in Lebanon, and that his former employers and the KGB have decided to eliminate some loose ends that might come back to haunt them - he is their current target! In desperation, he turns to his former colleague Richard Widmark ("Sam"), now retired to an antiques business with Gayle Hunnicutt ("Deborah") in Jerusalem. What ensues is a pretty lacklustre espionage thriller, with neither star really bothering. There is quite a funny scene with Reed before the wailing wall looking as if he is about to vomit - a scene that rather sums the whole thing up. It's largely devoid of jeopardy, what action there is has an inevitability about it that isn't at all helped out by a pretty formulaic script. It has some nice photography of the City of David (the bits folks are not trying to blow up) but otherwise is something you will soon forget.