The Little Drummer Girl

Having read the intriguing novel beforehand, I had looked forward to a film adaption. At that time I always imagined Andrea McArdle, a young Broadway stage actress and the original "Annie" was not only the right age, but had the look and personality of Charlie as described in the book.

Sadly, the casting of Diane Keaton was just a disaster. A choice the entire production never could overcome. Although a good actress, Keaton was about 15 years too old for the role of an ingénue who becomes the obsession of a terrorist, and her pronounced New York accent was too much at times.

The movie follows the novel very closely, perhaps too closely for it's own good. It should nave been about 20 minutes shorter. Still, even at it's full length, the screenplay misses the most interesting moment in the book, where the reader is left to ponder if Charlie has not only infiltrated, but, truly joined the "movement" and was ready to kill for the terrorist group.

The actual production seemed a bit on the cheap side. It appears the director wanted a look of reality, but by 80s standards that meant filming on location using real streets with little local activity to get in the way.

The rest of the cast, except for Klaus Kinski's star turn is totally forgettable.

Finally, over the years I've come to realize, The Little Drummer Girl was a story that was best served on the written page. Too much of the story is internalized in Charlie's mind, and that personal struggle is not easily translated to film.

Apart from a few curious departures from Le Carre's book of the same name the main thing wrong with this film is the casting of Diane Keaton as Charlie. Why the producers saw fit to use a relatively minor American actress to play the key role in this very strong story is something of a mystery, particularly when so many fine European actors were available at the time. Keaton strives to do her best but remains unconvincing throughout the play and her inadequacies are, unfortunately, highlighted by the superb performances from the rest of the stellar cast. Notwithstanding, the film is still well worth watching if only for the performances of Klaus Kinski and the rest of the cast. Plus the strong story line tends to over-ride some of the casting flaws. Moreover, since the film was made in the 1980's it is grittily realistic and doesn't suffer from the mawkish revisionism of recent films about international terrorism. Note: the earlier commentator who wondered why the character of Charlie would have been selected as a intelligence agent, seems to have missed the main point of the story. Charlie wasn't an agent - she was bait.

It's 1981 West Germany. Katrin delivers a bomb made by mysterious PLO bomb-maker Khalil killing an Israeli diplomat and his family. Charlie (Diane Keaton) is a naive pro-Palestinian actress. She is in Greece to do a job. When she spots Joseph, she believes him to be the masked Palestinian spokesman whose meeting she attended. He's actually an Israeli Mossad agent and they had taken the real masked man who is Khalil's brother Michel. The whole Greece trip is an Israeli trick. They reveal themselves to her and Martin Kurtz (Klaus Kinski) recruits her to be the brother's girlfriend to infiltrate Khalil's group.

John le Carré's brand of espionage stories is often muddled. His world is a murky chaotic vision where questionable things are done which are often not the right course of action. Having said that, I don't understand why the Israelis would ever recruit Charlie. It doesn't make sense to me. I don't see Charlie helping the Israelis or ever believe them enough to really help them. They don't need the recruit to be Jewish, just not anti-Israeli. It might make sense if they pretend to be another terrorist group hoping to connect to Khalil. It's simply hard to understand the Israeli's course of action. Charlie's motivation for her journey is way too twisty. If one can ignore the questionable motivations, the plot is an intriguing twisty affair.

The director is weak, the original story is great. What can I say, I'm an avid le Carre fan! To paraphrase Sidney Bruhl (Michael Caine in Deathrap, 1982) it's a story so good a bad director can't f**k it up. Check out the other comments, I agree with them. Klaus Kinski is great, he chews the scenery, and the supporting cast are all mini-gems. I was trying to decide if I liked Yorgo Voyagis, and I do. He may be too still for some people, but I believe Diane when she falls in love with him. And he has haunted eyes when he has to do bad things which are necessary for the Cause. Diane Keaton is so miscast. She's too old, she can't be an American doing St. Joan in England! She's good, but she can't be Charlie, she just can't. Maybe Helena Bonham-Carter, or Vanessa Redgrave when she was young, oh heck, there must be hundreds of english actresses slavering for this role at that time.

Nevertheless, I love the movie despite Diane Keaton (she does a good job, it's just I can't buy her in the role!).

Professional intelligence case workers appeal to four principal motives to recruit their agents: Money, Ideology, Compromise (meaning blackmail), and Ego, sometimes referred to by the acronym MICE. In THE LITTLE DRUMMER GIRL, we see a fifth motive used: Screenwriter's Fiat.

Charlie, a little pro-Palestinian Jane Fonda wannabe, is kidnapped by the Israeli Mossad, humiliated, and offered the job of spying on Palestinian terrorists. She accepts because, um, because, well, the screenwriter says so. Okay, so there's a vague effort to make us believe that Charlie's in love with one of the Mossad agents, but since her attraction to him was based entirely on the belief that he was a romantic, dashing leader of the Palestinian `revolution,' there's no basis for her to continue being attracted to him once she learns he's a spy for the Israelis whom she hates.

I'm not sure any woman in the world is quite so easily manipulated as Charlie in this movie. If such a woman really exists anywhere, why on earth would anyone want her as an intelligence agent? Anyone who can be convinced to change sides that easily once can surely be convinced to do so a second time. You wouldn't dare let her out of your sight for ten seconds, and as for allowing her to join a Palestinian terrorist training camp, where she'd be out of sight and in the presence of her old friends for months on end, forget about it. It's absurd. If I were politically correct, I would call it a misogynist movie, but that would probably be unfair. There's no evidence that director George Roy Hill imagined Charlie's weakness and stupidity to be typical of all women.

It's a shame that Charlie is neither a believable nor a likeable heroine, because in every other respect THE LITTLE DRUMMER GIRL is a great spy movie. I can't say precisely how realistic it is technically, but it feels authentic at every turn. The brutal interrogations of the captured terrorist, and the intense multilayered surveillance of Charlie ring very true. There's no one-man-army James Bond crap here; the Israelis assign a full squad of spies to every job. More importantly it gives us the psychological feel of the espionage profession. The stock in trade of professional spies is the betrayal of loyalty and the abuse of friendship. Naturally, this does not make for likeable characters, however much one may admire the cause for which they work. Hill does not attempt to sugarcoat this; he shows it to us as it is.

Diane Keaton should not be blamed for failing to make her ridiculous character convincing; she is clearly doing the best she can, and quite probably the best that anyone could have. Klaus Kinski steals every scene he gets as Mossad master agent Marty Kurtz. David Suchet gets a fine small role as a terrorist thug.

THE LITTLE DRUMMER GIRL is a fine example of how outstanding supporting performances, dedication, and sincerity (you rarely find movies this honest in Hollywood anymore) can rescue a movie whose protagonist is badly written. It's not half the movie it could have been, but it's a good movie anyway.

Rating: **½ out of ****.

Recommendation: See it on video or DVD with your friends.