Majestically directed by Huston, stuffed with great performances including Richard Boon, John O'Shea, Nigel Green, and especially Max Von Sydow who is in compelling form. Bibi Andersson is a revelation, so full of tenderness, anger and despair.Full of engaging characters, unexpected scenes, and plenty of twists this is a neglected classic of the genre.It needs a proper DVD release with plenty of extras, before all those involved pass away (Bibi Andersson and Barbara Parkins are the only principals still with us) Despite being central to the plot Orson Wells has little more than a cameo. O'Shea is little known now but deserves a larger entry in the footnotes of the secret agent roll.

Director John Huston also co-penned this complicated adaptation of Noel Behn's acclaimed spy novel set in 1969, with a team of crack operatives skilled in counter-intelligence matters and burglary sent to Moscow to retrieve an unauthorized anti-Red Chinese letter promising US aid to Russia via the destruction of China's atomic weapons. Star-studded tale of espionage and double-crosses rarely livens up, is often crass and offensive, yet it does have a certain arrogant style which maintains interest. The early assemblage of talents for the mission is fun (though there's the usual hubbub about accepting a girl into the circle), and Patrick O'Neal is commendably non-showy in the central role of the Naval officer who is unceremoniously dropped from the military to take part in the operation. Huston's decision not to use subtitles is most interestingly handled, and the Finnish locations are convincing (if drab). Still, the brutality in the film's final third is disheartening, and the twist climax underwhelming. ** from ****

****SPOILERS**** Confusing mess of as movie that centers around this letter that if its contents become know to the Communist Chinese Government it could very well spark a third world War between China and the US and USSR. What the letter is all about is a promise from a top member,very probably the head man, of the CIA that the US will join the USSR in an attack on the Chinese Communist nuclear facilities in a joint military operation when the time is right.As the movie slumbers along the letter becomes less and less important to the plot with the guy put in charge of getting the letter US Government Super Secret Agent Charles Rone, Patrick O'Neal, finding better things to do like become a male hustler in Moscow and getting acquainted with the Soviet sadistic counter-intelligence head Col. Kosnov, Max Von Sydow, oversexed wife Erika, Bibi Anderson. Erika is dying to leave the USSR and start a new life in the free world Western Europe or the good Ol' USA. And in the end Erika has half her wish, the dying part, come true!Rone was was drummed out of the US Navy with an dishonorable discharge as a cover for his new job as a US Super Secret Agent has retired US Government Agent ward, Richard Boone, show him the ropes in what's expected of him which is meeting up with a number of ex-government agents all round the world to coordinate the operation in keeping the letter,"The Kremlin Letter", from getting into the hands of the Communist Chinese Government. Which by the time the film is less then half over the mysterious letter is almost completely forgotten about only to resurface later in the hands of the Communist Chinese at a Pieking post office dead letter unit where no one there, in the post office as well as Communist Chinese Government, takes it seriously thinking that it some kind of a prank by the CIA or British I5 to create friction between the two communist super powers!Boring movie that you need an entire bottle of NoDoz to gulp down in order to stay awake to watch it from beginning to end. There's so many side plots in the film that at one point I thought that I was watching at least a half dozen different movies at the same time. ***SPOILERS***Agent Rone who by the time he finally gets the hang of it, his secret assignment, gets himself romantically involved with super safe cracker Elector Set's, Niall MacGinnis, daughter B.A (Barbara Perkins), who can crack safes with her feet as well as hands, that in the end backfires on him with her being used as a hostage in order to have him do what he was really recruited for to do in the first place! A hit job back in New York City that has nothing to do with what he thought he was in the movie for in the first place: "The Kremlin letter"! Talking about changing horses in the middle or a race!P.S There's also a cameo appearance, like in an Alfred Hitchcock movie, in the film by it's director John Huston playing someone called the Admiral as well as Orson Wells as the guy who's really pulling the strings in the film as Soviet Central Committee honcho Bresnavitch. But the person who really steals the show is George Sanders as Warlock a San Francisco transvestite who likes to nit red, Communist red, stockings in his spear time. Sanders or Warlock ended up being thrown out of his Moscow apartment window when it was decided by his handlers, the CIA?, that he had outlived his usefulness which couldn't have statued, in Sanders finally exiting this dull as dishwater film, him more!

This movie got bad reviews for a good reason--it is mediocre at the very best in spite of a stellar cast. Folks who like the movie claim it is an accurate portrayal of cold war espionage. Not likely, and how would they know? As a thriller it fails on most counts. None of the characters are likable. The plot is so twisted that it is hard to follow. At the end of the movie I thought, "who cares", and was irritated that I wasted two hours.The sexual politics were also offensive. Gay people are treated particularly poorly and women are mostly silly. Barbara Parkins is one exception but her part is fairly small.