In many ways this movie is excellent, but in many other ways it is not.
To begin with, the movie is too long; going on and on to use up time for a 5 part mini-series. It could have been a good 2 hour movie.
The excellent photography and on location filming combine with truly interesting coverage of the Uprising in Hungary in 1956 crushed by the Communists and later the Bay of Pigs Invasion where thousands of Cubans were encouraged and enabled to fight Fidel Castro by the Kennedy administration only to have the Kennedy brothers betray the operation letting them get slaughtered.
Ultimately, this five hour movie is undercut --- just as the Bay of Pigs was undercut -- in the final moments. We are then led to believe that the CIA agent who took us through 40 years of the Cold War was so clueless and so empty-American that he finally did not know whether America or Russia were the good guys. Well, gee whiz! The Russians enslaved Eastern Europe, erected the Berlin Wall, killed millions including more Jews than the Nazi's, had no concept whatever of human dignity and freedom. Ridley Scott and Tony Scott, the filmmakers, ought to move to Russia and be honest about their rancid viewpoint.
To begin with, the movie is too long; going on and on to use up time for a 5 part mini-series. It could have been a good 2 hour movie.
The excellent photography and on location filming combine with truly interesting coverage of the Uprising in Hungary in 1956 crushed by the Communists and later the Bay of Pigs Invasion where thousands of Cubans were encouraged and enabled to fight Fidel Castro by the Kennedy administration only to have the Kennedy brothers betray the operation letting them get slaughtered.
Ultimately, this five hour movie is undercut --- just as the Bay of Pigs was undercut -- in the final moments. We are then led to believe that the CIA agent who took us through 40 years of the Cold War was so clueless and so empty-American that he finally did not know whether America or Russia were the good guys. Well, gee whiz! The Russians enslaved Eastern Europe, erected the Berlin Wall, killed millions including more Jews than the Nazi's, had no concept whatever of human dignity and freedom. Ridley Scott and Tony Scott, the filmmakers, ought to move to Russia and be honest about their rancid viewpoint.