O Serviço Secreto em Ação

The film opens with a man's emotionless face in close up, enormously loud classical piano music and a phone ringing in the background. Is he listening to the music or is overlaid title music? This combination of intrusiveness and unclear purpose at the very opening of the film bodes badly for what follows. Sinatra, the world's finest singer of his time, was not a good actor but starry company and stirring plot buoyed up his performances. Here though he was with an unstarry made-for-TV cast with a convoluted plot and uninvolving characters where the task of carrying the film proved too much.

Tribute should be paid to the career of its director Sydney J. Furie who appears to be still directing at the age of 85 following a career of 50 years including the brilliant Ipcress File, Lady Sings the Blues and a string of Cliff Richard vehicles early on. Slack deserves to be cut for him on The Naked Runner. As he acknowledged in his personal quote - not every film was a winner. Some definitely were, sadly not this one.

I liked the Mauser gun that Sinatra used to kill the unhappy man with glasses. Then, the Romanian Nadia Gray makes a big role from a small part. Peter Vaughan and Derren Nesbitt both steal the film with their special performances. Sinatra is the same as in all his films, it's not bad but not great. Edward Fox has a role too small to show how great he is. Nobody runs naked in this movie, the title was chosen just to attract. In my opinion, the Russians would have boarded Frenzl directly on a plane to Moscow, they would not have traveled all over Europe, only to play the English game, to psychically prepare Laker-Sinatra for assassination.

A British espionage drama; A story based on a premise that British Intelligence cannot assign one of its own agents to murder a defector to Russia. Frank Sinatra's performance was excellent - the best thing about the film. He gave a convincing portrayal of a middle aged man under duress, forced into completing a dangerous mission. The director's stylish direction and trademark camerawork created a distinct atmosphere as an espionage thriller, though it was hard to keep this consistent when the plot became protracted. The story dullens in the middle and is marred by an abrupt ending. The locations are all interesting, particularly post-war Leipzig.

I have always liked Sinatra's acting, regardless of the pompous know it all critics here and elsewhere. However, the ending, really? Am I the only one that was let down with it? I won't say why, I think if you are a normal male(maybe even females would have the same reaction?) You'll know exactly what I mean without spoiling it for you. Still, I enjoyed the movie, I had missed this one. My favorite is Von Ryans Express, if you never saw it before, give it a try . 7/10 for me. Still worth the time.

This is an excellent spy thriller. The plot gets tangled at times, like what was that all about at the airport and the rifle? Sinatra is great and a well chosen international cast. It may be a B grade movie but you will certainly be entertained. The director uses a plethora of different camera angles which I thought were very good. It is too bad they didn't know how to end it.