Red King, White Knight

This is a good CIA thriller.

The KGB is not happy with the way Glasnost was playing out in the Soviet Union. They hire an international assassin to kill the Soviet leader. Then, the KGB goes on and starts killing off all of its agents who know anything about the plot.

After most of his friends are dead, one KGB bodyguard reaches out to the CIA with the assassination news. Because of the delicate times, the CIA hires a long-retired agent (for "deniability" if he's caught), to collect the info, to make a deal with the KGB bodyguard, and then to turn the info in to the CIA. But, he has no idea that the stakes are so high (thanks to the CIA lying to him).

After he arrives in Russia, he quickly realizes that BIG things are happening. He takes refuge with Helen Mirren (an old girlfriend). Meanwhile the KGB re-activates Max von Sydow to track him down, and kill him.

I enjoy this movie. While it's a thriller, it isn't gory, and it isn't super-fast paced. The casting is great, including Barry Corbin.

Red King, White Knight is a glossy UK/USA television movie made in 1989. Its premise quickly became dated with the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1990.

Set at the time of Mikhail Gorbachev as the reforming premier of the Soviet Union. Stoner (Tom Skerritt) is an alcoholic ex-CIA agent who cannot get over the suicide of his wife.

Now he is forced out of retirement as the Americans have come across some information that Gorbachev might be assassinated by Russian hardliners led by Tulayev (Tom Bell.)

Stoner has to get in touch with the man who has more details of the plot and smuggle him out of the Iron curtain. Only Tulayev gets to the defector first.

He also gets in touch with his former lover Anna (Helen Mirren) who he abandoned to her fate of a possible long prison sentence. Also on the horizon is old foe Szaz (Max von Sydow) sent to stop Stoner.

In Washington the politicians are not sure how much to help Gorbachev. They also fear the consequences of the liberalisation of the Soviet Union. The impact of the environment with more countries enjoying rampant consumerism.

This is a stodgy story, pretty standard television fare. Good acting, thinly sketched characters and a dull script.

It perks up with the action sequences later on. Part inspired by The Day of the Jackal.

It was a nice touch when the American advisors looked at the long term consequences of the ending of communism. That was prescient.

Mirren and Bell would later reunite in Prime Suspect.

Everything goes wrong here, but gradually and only by small details, the tragedy being triggered by some children storming around in an apartment house, disturbing a delicate operation of briefing, leading to the wrong man getting classified information by accident. That gradúally puts Tom Skerritt on the job, who doesn't want it, who is compelled by circumstances to accept it and who involuntarily does all he can to bungle it. He is the problem here, as he constantly loses control and is utterly careless about his behaviour in the former Soviet Union, where he should have been aware that everyone was watching him as an alien and sometimes rampant American. Max von Sydow does all he can to help this delicate mission clear out of the extremely perilous shallows and actually seems to succeed, while his contact with KGB never is followed up - the one flaw in the plot. Helen Mirren is as reliable as ever playing her part to genuine credibility and is admirably consistent, for which she is ultimately rewarded, while poor Tom Skerritt gets stuck in the mess of political KGB and CIA intrigue. The story is interesting as an important documentary of the age, paying a vital tribute to Gorbachev - the audience will be rewarded by his presence towards the grand finale of the end. As a whole, the story is ingenious in its thorough insight in the dawning hope of the age of Gorbachev, and also the inside discussions of the CIA are highly enlightening, while the American president is never even mentioned. It's a complex thriller but very convincing in its contrivance of a probable tragedy as the outcome of an assumed assassination plot, and the acting is superb throughout.

Like many Cold War thrillers, "Red King, White Knight" has become somewhat dated by the flow of historical events. Still, it remains a taut and enjoyable thriller. The plot centers on an internal KGB plan to assassinate the Soviet General Secretary at the time of the begins of the real reform movement. The film, done for cable by HBO, is well acted throughout, especially by Mirren and von Sydow.

It is by no means a masterpiece - the pacing at times seems to get sluggish, particularly those scenes dealing with the CIA's formulation of the Presidential briefing. Many of the smaller characters are too cardboard and one dimensional. Finally, action fans may find the film a bit too psychological for their tastes. But therein also lies its strengths as each of the main characters wrestles with their own past, ideologies and beliefs while trying to determine how to react to the KGB plot.

All in all, a good view.