History Is Made at Night

He's an American spy, she's a Russian spy, they're both in Helsinki spying on each other and sleeping together. They both know that, things being what they are in the 90s, they're probably not as relevant as they once were. They both have superiors who take things slightly more seriously than they do. Sounds like a good premise, and the film certainly had it's funny moments. I saw it at the Toronto Film Festival last week. The audience enjoyed it. Lots of laughs. I liked it. There are worse ways to spend two hours.

History is made at night has to be one of the worst films the Finnish film makers have touched in years. What a shame that director Ilkka Järvilaturi -who also made the terrible "Darkness in Tallinn"- has failed with a cast and crew like this: Irene Jacob and Kati Outinen, Kari Väänänen and Bill Pullman, Vesa-Matti Loiri and Bruno Kirby for example. Good performers' talents are wasted in a junk like this! Do your self a favor and don't watch this awful finnish try to make a romantic thriller that moves in time after cold war. This is not even unintentionally funny.

Porn star Henry Saari has role in this. He plays a man in a porn video. Even this video is nicer to watch than the rest of this stupid, ridiculous...

We love movies of all kinds. This movie was filmed in Finland by a Finnish director who appears to be trying to imitate spy movies from James Bond to Mission Impossible...and they did a very poor job of imitating.

Sadly, some really good American actors worked on this film. It was apparently made as a serious movie, but even Netflix lists this as a spy 'farce'.

If you like the Scary Movie or Airplane type movies, you might like this one OK - no way you could like it that much.

We really like Bill Pullman, but this movie would made you doubt his movie making decisions.

The music is awful (retro) and the speaking volume level is way too low compared to the music volume.

I'd say, get a different movie.

This film couldn't decide what kind of movie it wanted to be: a serious spy film, a light comedy, a dark comedy, or a romance. The acting wasn't good. The screenplay was awful. The directing was abysmal.

The idea could have worked: a mothballed CIA agent and his former-KGB girlfriend find themselves on opposite ends of a post-Cold War dispute, putting their relationship (and their lives) in jeopardy. But much of the plot line was completely unbelievable. Also the film was too choppy and inconsistent, almost schizophrenic at times. Just when you're starting to enjoy the farcical parts of the movie, BANG! The movie turns dark. I blame the director. It doesn't appear that he had any kind of overarching plan for this movie, seemingly taking each scene individually, and setting the film adrift as a result. About the only thing going for it was sex appeal, and even that grew tiresome.

Take my advice: avoid this movie. There are better ways to spend 90 minutes.

I know this film from the title "Spy Games."

It is one of those man versus woman films, that also is West (American) versus East (Russian) and has the familiar James Bond-type scenario in which spies working on opposite sides are still lovers at the same time.

Bill Pullman and Irene Jacob play those two roles. It was shocking to see full frontal nudity on Jacob not once but several times. Yes, "history was made at night" if you were with her!

Pullman was okay but nothing special in his role. Actually, I had a hard time believing his role. The same goes for the movie in general: okay, but nothing so involving that you can't put it down. The premise was more interesting than what was delivered.