CIA serious

Rating: 6/10 (30 December 2013)

With a big star cast and big-name actor as director (and I enjoyed De Niro's previous outing behind the cameras "A Bronx Tale" and an interesting subject-matter I had high hopes for this spy-thriller, but ultimately found myself rather bored and uninterested in the final analysis.
The setting up of the CIA and its interaction with British Intelligence and later of course the KGB made for intense viewing but by using a convoluted time-scale with numerous, non- sequential flashbacks, a preponderance of characters and an overlong running-time, it just didn't hold my attention enough. At its heart is a sort of whodunit as the Agency tries to unmask the leak to the Russians which derailed the disastrous US Bay Of Pigs to unseat Castro in Cuba, but you wouldn't need to be Sherlock Holmes to work who the perpetrator is so that I found myself getting ahead of the plot anticipating the inevitable outcome.
Interwoven around this are various other plot strands taking in the Cambridge Communist spy-ring in the UK and the identity of a supposed Soviet double-agent, played out to a background of central character Matt Damon' life and times and his tempestuous relationship with his wife, played by Angelina Jolie and difficult connection with his son.
For the so-called head of department, however, Damon isn't exactly discreet in his own personal affairs plus he rarely seems to demonstrate either the steely resolve or keen intelligence of someone so highly placed. The movie does have some effective scenes, including three dramatic executions and a shocking water-boarding torture scene obviously redolent of, at the time, recently reported front-line events in Iraq with the US military.
The acting rarely rose above the writing in my opinion and while De Niro's direction is adequate and occasionally inventive he really should have edited at least half an hour off the running time and upped the pace generally.
In short, a whole much less than the constituent parts.