Berlin Affair

"Berlin Affair" is worth seeing, but you should be aware that it's far from great. This is because the story seems choppy...as if some things were left out of the story. It also leaves the viewer a bit confused...as if they somehow missed something.

Pete Killian (Darren McGavin) is some sort of agent for some sort of spy-like agency. You really are not sure if he's exactly a spy or more like a mercenary or what have you. And, you really are not sure who he's working for and what they represent other than they are headquartered in Geneva. These folks have an assignment for Pete...to locate some old friend for them. Why? And, why do many people want this guy? You'll just need to see and try to piece it together yourself. This made for TV movie is part spy-type picture and romance, as Pete romances a girl in order to hopefully find his target.

Overall, this is a decent but confusing picture. McGavin is fine and the international locales are nice. But the story isn't 100% satisfying.

By which I mean everyone else apparently dislikes this TV movie but I kind of like it. It is perhaps the last (I can't think of a later one) of the 1960s "spy" genre movie - you know, featuring some super smooth and slick Sean Connery/Dean Martin/Robert Wagner/Robert Vaughn/James Coburn type who knows everything and can do anything while working for some all-so-secret-and-powerful yet unnamed super spy agency, surrounded by women flaunting their charms and throwing themselves at him - of a kind that only outlasted the era in the increasingly campy James Bond films. Darren McGavin is a hoot, trying so hard to play it straight but once in a while uncorking his Kolchak-style sarcastic-style wit and cynicism, which is dreadfully against character but still fun to see. Why do I like this overly complex, out of date already spy sturm und drang? First, it's one of the few TV movies of the period shot on location and we get great scenes of Berlin. Second, McGavin is awesome even though his characterization wobbles all over the place as he seems to delight in making faces the more absurd the situation gets. Third, the female co-stars are fabulous, including his criminally underused wife, Kathie Browne. Fourth, the script is kind of clever even if indecipherable at times. (Bad guy: "Remember me, I work for XYZ?" McGavin: "Ah, XYZ." Bad guy: "Yes, XYZ" McGavin: "AG!" Okay, you have to be following the plot to understand why that's amusing, and incidentally, "AG" is just German for "Inc.," so this is kind of German in-joke inside a Hollywood production, which you just don't see too often. Okay, anyway....) The female characters are the only ones allowed to show emotion in this kind of flick, and they do a good job. It's just moody and episodic, with loose cannon McGavin struggling mightily to keep a straight face carrying it. Okay, go ahead, hate me for being the oddball who likes this, but I do. I think it's worth catching if you're just in the mood for something moody.

Berlin Affair is a story which requires four hours to tell and when the screen play is edited down to 90 minutes you end up with what you have here. A choppy series of scenes which leaves the viewer feeling frustrated by having to imagine the details and connect the dots. It's not a terrible movie, the actors perform well and the story is interesting, but like many spy thrillers there just isn't enough time allowed to make it well enough to fully enjoy. There were some scenes done well enough to keep my interest but the action scenes seemed so truncated and broken up that they didn't make much sense. Not a bad choice for entertainment on a late night "whatever" pick. 6/10.

Darren McGavin is employed to find an old colleague of his, Brian Kelly, who has been turned out of Turkey as an undesirable - we never learn the reason. He finds him all right, but then he loses him, as Kelly tries to kill him, to keep him out of Kelly's business. But Kelly has a sweetheart, and McGavin cultivates her friendship, and they become lovers. That was not supposed to have happened. Complications ensues.

Darren McGavin plays a tough die-hard agent with hard knuckles and grimness spelt all over him, and he only smiles once in the film. He makes a very standard agent performance, fitting perfectly into the superficiality of the film. All Berlin is in the film, but only the polished modern side, nothing of the Berliners, nothing of the wall, nothing of East Berlin, just modern sterility all the way. Richard Burton might have been able to do something of this character, but McGavin does not, but only plays out his brute force. Unfortunately this is a film you will regret having wasted your time on, while you might have been able to watch a much better film - this is miles away from "The Spy that Came in from the Cold", a great story with great characters, while here neither the story nor the characters are great. The music is good enough, and that's the best part of the film.