Not nearly as good as Breach (2007) about the worst double-agent in FBI history, Robert Hanssen. This is about the worst CIA double-agent ever. Maybe the worst leaker to USSR ever. I'm not an expert on either case to be fair as I have not read books about these specific spies. But I know a bit about them from various sites, books, and documentaries. I can judge the historical stuff to a light degree, but I know practically everything about movies. It's a TV movie that feels cheap, but it never really makes it feel fake or that lazy. It's just not pretty, doesn't have great setting or shots, doesn't have big sets, doesn't shows much besides what you expect from a movie about an office worker. I'd have liked for example to have more scenes set in Russia as he did get a lot of agents executed there by leaking their identities. Yet we only get 1 scene with American actors who memorized Russian lines. It's cringe if you know Russian and it's not showing us all the death he caused. They constantly use just random actors to play Russians. Timothy Hutton is great in this role as Ames, but he is is supposed to speak fluent Russian, of course he doesn't here. You can excuse that. But a scene set in Russia where people can't speak Russian?
The wife is amazing. Just arrogant and greedy from the get-go and doesn't mind him selling secrets to KGB as she loves spending money. We see how she worries about him getting caught then turns into a diva as the waiter comes by, genius. All actors are great, but there is not much tension anyhow so they are easy roles. Scenes are often played up for comedic effect as the director knew he didn't have a tight script to work with. Compared to Breach there is no tension-filled investigation. We just see him sell documents to KGB. Then USSR collapses. And then then CIA investigates his personal budgets and finds out that he met KGB agents right before getting a bunch of cash sent to his bank account. That's it, that's our double-agent! Breach had a full investigation step by step. We saw what they did when and often they were about to fail. Here they do work for years getting nowhere, but when they look into his personal budgets that reveals it all. Couldn't they have done that from day one? Well, in the movie maybe. But in reality they didn't just luck into finding him. They did conduct an investigation like in Breach, just smaller. They had a bunch of evidence. They surveilled him electronically, followed him everywhere, looked through his trash, had a GPS on his car. So a giant data gathering investigation that in the movie is presented as 3 old ladies just generally looking through files and only once looking at a specific thing. We never even hear about him being followed or monitored in any way. This I feel is the big mistake in the movie. The acting is great, the sets are good as it's 1998 and they didn't have to change much to make it look proper. It's just that we get basically no CIA work. We don't see Ames do real work. He just at times says some fake movie CIA words to make it look like he is working. We don't actually see what he did for CIA. We don't see the people investigating him or his bosses working. It's a lazy script this way. Breach had quite a few details about what they did and the technology they used. It felt real even though it was made much later and had a harder time finding the right sets. Constructing it all years later is way more expensive. There is also a TV show about Ames I'll watch now. It's based on a book by the investigators so likely better history wise. But maybe not as it turns into a bragging event in such a case.
We watch these movies to learn about the events and history. Docs can't give us small details about how he acted or what he did what day. A movie can, this didn't. But it's still a fun flick for sure. It's never dull and the quiet scenes are filled with random jokes or interesting events. In real life Ames was a big loser. An alcoholic as most of these double-agents are. He found a pretty woman in Mexico and divorced his wife. But she was from nobility, poor but pretentious and lavish. She wanted riches from this loser American. And he fought for a promotion, but was just too poor a worker to get anywhere in CIA. So he started to sell documents to KGB. Not quite what we see in the movie. Here Ames is young and handsome, fairly upstanding, has a young attractive wife. Everything is going well for him besides her extravagant spending. We get to see him drinking a bit too much and hear about it. But overall he's not slimy. The mole motivation is a bit forced when the character overall looks happy. He also never really looks miserable. Often these moles will be alcoholics, divorced, addicted to sex, look nervous at times. That's my overall view of them. It's a stressful job. Ames never looked even a bit worried. But the inner dialogue did help making us see he was which was great. We just never saw it.
Hence it's a movie worth a watch for sure. Quite engaging. But overall feels like a missed opportunity so show the investigation into him as we follow him here not anyone else. So we can't see what anyone else is doing. Still, historical movies are seldom fully correct. This shows the basics and it feels real enough. I personally enjoyed it quite a bit.
The wife is amazing. Just arrogant and greedy from the get-go and doesn't mind him selling secrets to KGB as she loves spending money. We see how she worries about him getting caught then turns into a diva as the waiter comes by, genius. All actors are great, but there is not much tension anyhow so they are easy roles. Scenes are often played up for comedic effect as the director knew he didn't have a tight script to work with. Compared to Breach there is no tension-filled investigation. We just see him sell documents to KGB. Then USSR collapses. And then then CIA investigates his personal budgets and finds out that he met KGB agents right before getting a bunch of cash sent to his bank account. That's it, that's our double-agent! Breach had a full investigation step by step. We saw what they did when and often they were about to fail. Here they do work for years getting nowhere, but when they look into his personal budgets that reveals it all. Couldn't they have done that from day one? Well, in the movie maybe. But in reality they didn't just luck into finding him. They did conduct an investigation like in Breach, just smaller. They had a bunch of evidence. They surveilled him electronically, followed him everywhere, looked through his trash, had a GPS on his car. So a giant data gathering investigation that in the movie is presented as 3 old ladies just generally looking through files and only once looking at a specific thing. We never even hear about him being followed or monitored in any way. This I feel is the big mistake in the movie. The acting is great, the sets are good as it's 1998 and they didn't have to change much to make it look proper. It's just that we get basically no CIA work. We don't see Ames do real work. He just at times says some fake movie CIA words to make it look like he is working. We don't actually see what he did for CIA. We don't see the people investigating him or his bosses working. It's a lazy script this way. Breach had quite a few details about what they did and the technology they used. It felt real even though it was made much later and had a harder time finding the right sets. Constructing it all years later is way more expensive. There is also a TV show about Ames I'll watch now. It's based on a book by the investigators so likely better history wise. But maybe not as it turns into a bragging event in such a case.
We watch these movies to learn about the events and history. Docs can't give us small details about how he acted or what he did what day. A movie can, this didn't. But it's still a fun flick for sure. It's never dull and the quiet scenes are filled with random jokes or interesting events. In real life Ames was a big loser. An alcoholic as most of these double-agents are. He found a pretty woman in Mexico and divorced his wife. But she was from nobility, poor but pretentious and lavish. She wanted riches from this loser American. And he fought for a promotion, but was just too poor a worker to get anywhere in CIA. So he started to sell documents to KGB. Not quite what we see in the movie. Here Ames is young and handsome, fairly upstanding, has a young attractive wife. Everything is going well for him besides her extravagant spending. We get to see him drinking a bit too much and hear about it. But overall he's not slimy. The mole motivation is a bit forced when the character overall looks happy. He also never really looks miserable. Often these moles will be alcoholics, divorced, addicted to sex, look nervous at times. That's my overall view of them. It's a stressful job. Ames never looked even a bit worried. But the inner dialogue did help making us see he was which was great. We just never saw it.
Hence it's a movie worth a watch for sure. Quite engaging. But overall feels like a missed opportunity so show the investigation into him as we follow him here not anyone else. So we can't see what anyone else is doing. Still, historical movies are seldom fully correct. This shows the basics and it feels real enough. I personally enjoyed it quite a bit.