This top-notch mystery movie with ingenious plot contains tension , mystery , surprises and , of course , a suspenseful ending , dealing with a Nazi German spy acting undercover as an Englishman who becomes involved with a married woman . The title "Eye of the Needle" is that it is a reference to the eye of the stiletto blade that Nazi spy Henry Faber uses to kill his enemies . This World War II movie is set in London 1940 , during the Blitz when it opens , there a German Superspy , the Needle (Donald Sutherland) gravitates towards murder and treason . Meanwhile , a young couple goes out in their ¨Just married¨ car , but they have a strong accident . Four years later , a new allied offensive to take place : Normandy or Calais ¿ ; then , the Needle discovers a vital evidence about the Allies D-Day invasion : Operation Overlord . As The Needle capable of terrible violence , he often uses killing means to carry out his purports , at the same time being relentlessly chased by Godliman (Ian Bannen) . While en route to report his Nazi commander , Admiral Canaris : Secret Service chief , he makes for the Scotish coast to escape on a U-Boat when his small boat is shipwrecked before being picked up and the Needle is washed ashore . Posing as a shipwrecked sailor , he washes on a deserted England island , off the Scottish coast , being saved by a family formed by a crippled man (Christopher Cazenove) , his wife (Kate Nelligan) and child . And the spy becomes involved with the spouse while he waits to be picked up and he , then , begins to contemplate his role in the war , as both of them must decide between their love or country .Interesting drama/thriller plenty of thrills , taut , intrigue and twists . The film relies heavily on Donald Sutherland character when he falls in love with the woman and their lovely as well as twisted relationship . Despite of the fashion-able sex and violence , this is a satisfyingly old-fashioned sort of film that avid fans of the genre will love . Nice acting by Donald Sutherland as a German spy carrying information that will reveal the target and being stranded on an isolated island ; Donald gives a perfect performance as a cold killer using his trusty switchblade against suspects . This was one of three films in five years where Donald Sutherland played a German character who was either a Nazi or son of a Nazi . The movies are Bear Island (1979), Eyed of the needle (1981) and The Eagle Has Landed (1976). None of the main characters , Sutherland , Nelligan, Cazenove , is very sympathetic , but all of them are well drawn , which is more important here . Support cast is frankly good , such as Ian Bannen as relentless pursuer , David Hayman as Canter , Bill Frazer and debut credited theatrical feature film of actor Bill Nighy and first full length feature of Rik Mayall.Colorful and brilliant cinematography by Alan Hume shot on location in Mull , Argyll , Oban and Bute, Scotland , Blackbush Airport, Hampshire, and in Shepperton Studios, Shepperton, Surrey, England . A cottage and lighthouse were constructed on the The Isle of Mull for the production . Impressive and breathtaking musical score by Hollywood maestro Miklos Rozsa in one of his last soundtracks . This intelligent thriller that the Bristish production seems to produce every two or three years was compellingly directed by Richard Marquand . He was hired by George Lucas after seeing ¨Eye of the needle¨ and only non-American to direct a Star Wars film : ¨The return of the Jedi¨, Lucas was mainly impressed how Marquand was able to finish a difficult production on time and on Budget , a factor which was critical on a huge production like Star Wars . His first film was the terror one titled ¨The legacy¨(79) , he went on with the successful ¨The jagged edge¨ (85) . However , his career failed with flops such as : ¨Until September¨ (84) a routine romance movie and a musical : ¨Hearts of fire¨ (87) until his early death.

Henry Faber (Donald Sutherland) is actually a German spy nicknamed "the Needle" for his stabbing stiletto. He's been broadcasting since early in the war. He discovers the phantom Patton army as a fake leading up to D-Day. He is pursued by the British authorities. He tries to carry the valuable information back to Germany but his boat sinks off of Storm Island. He is cared for by Lucy (Kate Nelligan) and her crippled husband David with their son. A romance ensues as the drama escalates.It's a good spy thriller with a wartime romance to top it off. Sutherland is terrific as cold hearted killer. I don't think we need David and Lucy until they encounter Henry Faber. It adds very little to the movie. They cut up the dramatic tension of the spy thriller in the first half of the movie. There is good thrills and good tension.

This is a WWII espionage thriller. The story in the movie moves very fast until it gets to Storm Island where things slow down a bit. The focus is on Donald Sutherland's character, then on Storm Island, when it should have been followed more, particularly how he got to Storm Island. The ending of the book was eliminated. I thought adding the ending of the book and how the ending came to, would have added a more of a personal love for what was going to happen to all of the characters. I was wanting for the demise of Faber more because I knew what Lucy was going through and who she would meet in the end of the story. The A story moved fast and didn't fit with the B story at first. The B story wasn't strong at first. When it came together it seemed thrown together. In the book it came together better.

From a distance, an everyday moviegoer might doubt the production value of this movie. A 1982 Ken Follett adaptation that's hardly available on DVD? Well, it's made by the same director as Return of the Jedi. Yet when it begins and unfolds, it's reminiscent of nothing so much as one of those unsentimental, persevering, discreetly disturbing, and, on a few occasions, blackly hilarious war movies that used to be made by the former British film industry. Donald Sutherland plays the kind of reserved sociopath who should ideally thrive in black-and-white movies, yet the color here is sometimes funereal enough to avail. This unaffected thriller is made with humble potency.It is about a German spy, Die Naadel, who dropped out of sight in Germany in 1938 and now inhabits a series of drab bed-sitting-rooms in England while he spies on the British war effort. He is known as the Needle because of his signature means of dispatch. He kills with an exceptional absence of feeling. As played by Sutherland with a rather stand-offish, cool, and even critical manner, the Needle is a man no one knows. We are given inklings to account for his rationale: He was raised by parents who did not love him, he was shipped off to boarding schools, he spent parts of his childhood in America, where he learned English. None of the account altogether clears up his viciousness, but then I suppose it is no more than a secret agent's business to be vicious. Perhaps it's no one's fault someone is ruthless.Ken Follett's deftly communicated thread is by inches both undercover operations and mystery. The Needle unravels a hoax to evade the Germans. His task is to be the very one to confront Die Fuhrer with the information of the actual Allied invasion plans. This he means to do with every tissue of his being, and yet we never get the sense that this man is a nationalist. He is more of an existentially decisive, unbending envoy. In his endeavors to convene with a Nazi submarine, he's shipwrecked on a remote island populated merely by a lighthouse keeper and a goat-farming family comprised of a woman played by the emotionally receptive Kate Nelligan, her legless husband and their son.The last third of the movie turns into a blood-spattered drama in which the action is more pertinent than the characterization. But before that, he poses as just a shipwrecked seafarer. And Nelligan, her appearance fittingly preceded by her co-star being adrift at sea, is disheartened by her husband's drunkenness and unwillingness to love, and becomes endeared to the stranger. Does he become enamored of her? We can never be certain, though he tells her things he has told to no one else.It is compelling to build a plot like this at a studious tread, rather than rushing head on through it. It gives us time to weigh the character of the Needle, and to contemplate his exceptionally scant, mysterious allusions to what he feels versus what he thinks. Instead of an unambiguously good and evil clash, despite the melodrama of the last act, we have by then learned things about him that he may not even know about himself, and that is why the film's final scene is so much more intricate than it appears.