Final Assignment

An acquaintance of mine worked in the USSR at the time when this movie was shot. No way a journalist would have turned up in Moscow so unprepared... and so trustful of her 'minder'. Trying to people on the street would get them arrested indeed, so it would have been rather a selfish thing for a journalist to do.

This is an example of what Canadians describe as a "Stars and Stripes" movie, that is, a film shot on Canadian soil functioning as surrogate for other lands, Quebec filling in for Russia in this instance, with non-Canadian actors being principals, as here when England's Michael York portrays a Soviet official, others being Americans Colleen Dewhurst and Burgess Meredith. Production difficulties troubled the piece from its beginnings and, after a week of shooting, director Paul Almond is called upon to take the helm of "Iron Curtain", its working title (changed to "Moscow Chronicles", eventually to "Final Assignment"), but Almond is faced with two forbidding obstacles; a woeful script and a shallow performance by his wife, Genevieve Bujold, as Canadian journalist Nicole Thomson. Nicole convinces her employer to assign her to cover a Moscow-based disarmament conference between the U.S.S.R. and Canadian governments, and while in the Soviet capital she becomes romantically enmeshed with the press liaison officer (York) and also discovers a research program whereby scientists are utilizing young children as subjects for steroid experimentation, a dangerous project that Nicole chooses to investigate at the risk of her safety. She commits espionage by attempting to smuggle from the country the ailing granddaughter of a prominent scientist (Dewhurst) along with a video tape that reveals detailed research proceedings, and with assistance from a Canadian fur merchant (Meredith) she leads the K.G.B upon a merry chase. The film is of a genre that depicts a large agency, historically successful in its ordained purpose, e.g., Gestapo, S.S., C.I.A., K.G.B., et alia, that readily becomes befuddled and completely accommodating to an individual's plans to undermine it: seldom even remotely believable, and certainly not in this picture that surprisingly was nominated for Canada's Genie awards for best actress (Bujold), screenplay, editing, and sound editing, leading one to deduce that pickings must have been lean that year since Bujold is as unfocussed as is the scenario, while the sound dubbing and mixing are below par; Dewhurst handily outshines other members of the cast.

Canadian reporter infiltrates Moscow to cover criminal trial of anti-Soviet dissident accused of espionage, getting involved in espionage herself after a prominent female doctor asks her to take Soviet medical reports to the West. This Canadian production from director Paul Almond (star Geneviève Bujold's former husband and collaborator) and screenwriter Marc Rosen is relatively poor, though it is helped somewhat by a solid cast. Bujold gives the clumsily-written script all she's got: curious and cynical, she seems to come with a built-in B. S. detector. Michael York (with a shaky Russian accent) is the romantic Comrade who may or may not be on her side, and Colleen Dewhurst is the enigmatic doctor who works at "the Institute" (Dewhurst publicly dismissed the film, saying it was "like summer stock in Podunk"). Bujold seems to be doing a reprise of her feisty doctor battling mysterious adversaries in "Coma"; that's all well and good, but the budget and the brains of a tightly-wound mystery story are sadly missing this time. *1/2 from ****