Bleak, confusing, boring, uninspired

Rating: 3/10 (5 November 2012)

Sure, even in the times of cold war and the iron curtain, your average spy day wasn't filled with car chases, exploding buildings and what-have-you. But this movie hits the all-time high on my boredom scale. Seriously -- no matter how much work you put into a movie: if half the theater is asleep when the end credits roll, you did a really shitty job as a writer, director and producer (unless you have a contract with the tranquilizer industry as well).
The movie earns its three stars for the cast, which does a good (not outstanding) job, and the sets which make the time the story takes place in come back to life. But "life" is the wrong word; the whole movie feels like something undead; some zombie resurrected from the grave which should've stayed there instead of haunting the living.
Now, I really enjoy it if a movie takes its time to let the actors perform and the story unfold. But here, a very confusing, yet surprisingly thin story is stretched way too far. You keep waiting for the moment when it all comes together, but the climax is so extremely disappointing (and not worth the term) that you wonder why you have stayed in the theater for that long. Together with the bleak, depressing look of the movie, the scenes which drag on endlessly, no character to identify with, and the lack of activity, this makes for an extremely unhealthy mixture. Not to mention that suspense is as alien to this movie as modesty is to Jim Cameron.
To sum it up, this movie is absolutely not worth its money, and this time I feel betrayed for almost three hours of lifetime I could have spent with a good book -- or a good movie.
It does not have to be a James Bond flick or some other action-laden movie to make for an entertaining evening in the world of spies and agents, but there are a lot of movies out there which are a lot more fun to watch than this one, which isn't even worth the rental fee.