THE WHISTLE BLOWER
A film review by Mark R. Leeper
Copyright 1987 Mark R. Leeper
Capsule review: Not quite a spy thriller and not
exactly a mystery, but somewhere in between. It asks, among
other things, how much of what we are told about the Cold War
is true? There are better espionage stories on the BBC, but
this British import has its moments. Rating: +1.
There's a dark world and a light world. They co-exist side by side. Most of us live in the light world and think we have some idea of what is going on. Sometimes we do and sometimes we don't. Sometimes what we think we know has been a play put on for our benefit by the people who live in the dark world. It's the dark world that's real. That is the theme of a new film, a murder mystery with espionage overtones, THE WHISTLE BLOWER, directed by Simon Langton, and based on a novel written by John Hale. That's an old idea, but it gets a few new wrinkles in this mystery that is not so much a who-done-it as a what-are-they-doing-and-why.
Bob Jones (played by Nigel Havers) is a Russian-language translator for British intelligence. That is still living in the light world, but he gets occasional glimpses of what is going on in the dark world. He is disturbed by what the Soviets are doing, what the Americans are doing, and what his own government is doing, all under the cover of state security. At the very least, he wants to quit his job. His father (played by Michael Caine) thinks he would be foolish to give up a good job in a world that doesn't seem to be crying for linguists. But Bob wants to do more. He wants to tell the world what sort of thing happens in the intelligence game, to lift the veil on one small corner of the dark world. And that could get people killed.
THE WHISTLE BLOWER isn't a great mystery, nor does it seem much of a spy thriller, nor does it really have a strong social comment. But it does do a nice job of integrating all three with a sense of irony at times. It meshes MISSING with MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE. If you think about it, these shouldn't go so well together; perhaps there is more to this film than meets the eye. This is one of those films where what each person tries to do makes sense, but the sum total is a knot of complexity.
Other familiar faces include John Gielgud, James Fox, and Gordon Jackson. (There is also a minor, and perhaps unintentional, in-joke in the casting of Jackson's superior, a face that will be familiar to people at all familiar with Jackson's career.)
THE WHISTLE BLOWER is not a great film, it's not a spell-binding thriller, and there is little in it you haven't seen before someplace, but it does skillfully play off of Cold War paranoia. Give it a +1 on the -4 to +4 scale.
Mark R. Leeper
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