Genres

Visitors Review

2012-05-22 13:29:42

Truly entertaining!!!! Romantic Thriller, Action Thriller and Espionage Thriller in 3 parts! Great!!!!

What I like especially about THE COMPANY is, that the three episodesare very well paced and that each reflects a different movie genre.The first episode is a romantic thriller in which the main characterfalls in love with a German ballet dancer that provides the CIA withinformation. However, as often in spy movies, this love can't last andwill haunt the protagonist until the end of his life. The second partis again involving romantic relationships, however this time the storyis much more action dominated - this part I would say is an actionthriller. I was fascinated by the way the filmmakers narrated theHungarian Revolution and also how they were able to capture theemotions of the people involved in Cuba in such a short time. The thirdpart then again is a first class espionage thriller that concentrateson deception amongst trusted allies and how betrayal can make a manloose trust in his own instincts. I loved every second of the preview I was lucky to attend!

2012-05-22 04:26:20

The Company

This review is from: The Company (DVD) The product arrived in a short time in good condition. This movie is well done and actually speaks about the same people and process that was chronicled in The Good Shepherd.

2012-05-21 06:38:39

Beautiful and gripping

If you are looking for an extremely well produced, well-acted, spy-thiller that doesn't insult your intelligence, you will enjoy every minute of this. But understand that it is historical fiction. Everyone giving this movie less than 4 or 5 stars doesn't understand the concept of historical fiction.I've watched it three times now. Honestly, it gets better each time.

2012-05-20 13:41:04

chris o'donnells hairpiece distracts

Just finished watching last night; the mini-series was okay. I liked the Budapest street fights with tanks and the house to house. The Bay of Pigs deal was done pretty good. I also like the small training in Guatemala. However, most of these events were minimized and seemed choppy. Alfred Molina is great in all of his scenes, sure of himself and relxed. I didn't like the way Micheal Keaton subdued his character. Finally, Chris O'Donnells hairpiece kept distracting me in each of his scenes; in both decades. Is he really going bald in real life? That smirk of his was also annoying. Maybe if he would have grown a real mustache later in the series(not fake), his natural aging would have not been an issue. All in all, a good rental, but not for purchase. I got it free for accumulating Coke Reward points: 45 and you get a free Blockbuster movie rental. Since I drink a lot of coke I, it's just a bonus.

2012-05-20 08:44:47

Excelente, la recomiendo

Excelente historia que narra los inicios de la CIA a través de las misiones de Jack Mc Auliffe (Chris O'Donnell), Alfred Molina (Jack Torritti) y Michael Keaton (Mother) en Alemania del Este, Hungría y Cuba. Un punto muy interesante de la historia es el intricado que viven intentando descubrir el espía de la KGB dentro de la CIA. La compañía ofrece 4.5 horas de entretenimiento.Algo en contra es que el DVD no ofrece subtítulos en español, el segundo idioma mas hablado en USA.

nick-841 2012-05-19 23:26:44

True to the book

I have read the book a couple of times, and have only just seen theseries in the UK . I thought it was excellent. While I know what theearlier poster means about Alfred Molina, actually I though he wasgreat in that part. So what if he is an English actor? Were all theRussions played by Russians? By the way you should watch TV in Englandwith all the American actors with phony English accents. Molina wasgreat as were all the main players. Seeing how the investigative workto track down the spies developed over time was maybe the mostinteresting part of the story. Given modern technology it is unlikelythat some very well know spies would have survived long if the ITresources had been available back in the 50s/60s. I think this will beone for the DVD collection.

2012-05-10 05:55:30

Mixed

This survey of the CIA's first three decades is an admirably lavish and detailed production that takes us from Berlin to the Bay of Pigs to Langley. Unfortunately, the agent at the center of it all is the fulsomely bland Chris O'Donnell. (We also get a distractingly mis-cast Alfred Molina.) Stay with it though, as the last of the three sections is definitely the best. That's when we get the best scenes of Michael Keaton's portrait of James Angelton as an irritating and self-indulgent paranoid. (Or is he?) It's an audacious performance and we get just enough of it to be fascinated. Not so however with Rory Cochrane's turn as a KGB cut-out working in the states. He is sensational, and not in it nearly enough.

2012-05-09 09:24:52

Impressive...very impressive.

This review is from: The Company [Blu-ray] (Blu-ray) I didn't roll into this one with high expectations, even though I love all three of the major actors.There are three parts to this, and while the first one is a bit slow, the 2nd and 3rd are terrific.Keaton is a bit annoying at first, but really comes into his own in later episodes. Any of the three show why they are excellent ACTORS.Great pic (on Blu Ray), first rate production. A lot of care went into this, with having to age the actors across 3 decades. You won't be disappointed.

2012-05-09 06:20:25

Great Series

This review is from: The Company (DVD) Don't miss it, was one of the most entertaining mini series ever. Great buy!

2012-05-08 11:25:30

Somewhere in the middle.

First of all, I actually enjoyed this mini-series, which, as has been noted, is elegantly produced and, on the whole, well acted. The costumes and settings are also excellent and evocative of the period. Michael Keaton is especially good in the role of chain-smoking James J. Angleton. And Tom Hollander, who seems to be making a career playing various Cambridge spies (He still has to play Maclean, Cairncross, and Blunt [which will require a real suspension of disbelief].), is brilliant (as usual) in the role of Philby (whom the writers have coyly called by one of his middle names, Adrian, so that viewers who may be only vaguely familiar with the early history of CIA will not guess he is Kim, the British Soviet Mole). Hollander plays the spy with understated charm, and his suggestion of Philby's stammer never slips into parody. Good points being acknowledged, I now come to various aspects that have been already stated in other reviews: the overproduced music (which sometimes drowns out crucial dialogue); the handsome but rather wooden hero, who ages twenty years only in the steel color of his hair; and the confusing flashbacks, which cloud the narrative. As one who is fairly familiar with the historical background, I was also annoyed by details, which I admit are picky: if the heroes graduated in the Yale class of 1954 (as has been indicated), Philby, along with Burgess, had vacated Washington in 1951; by 1954, Burgess was in Moscow and Philby was being interrogated in London, cleared, and rehired by SIS and sent to Beirut under cover as a foreign correspondant, so there is no way that the young Yalies would have been in on the Philby debacle (One of them is depicted as delivering whisky and other goodies to him in Washington.). I think I prefer the "Good Shepherd's" solution of giving real people false names [We still knew that Matt Damon was Angleton!]. Then, none of these plot points would make the slightest bit of difference. Again, I enjoyed the mini-series, which, under the aegis of Ridley Scott, sticks to standards that are much higher than the usual U.S. television fare. I did not think the series was as bad as some reviewers have judged it, but then, I think it could have been far better with a little more planning and a lot more editing.

xylokopos 2012-05-01 04:25:15

Cold War Revisited

The Company is a pretty decent mini-series about the CIA and the ColdWar; I found it informative and well put together, even though a numberof crucial CIA moments were absent. The cast was uniformly good, andeven though no amount of make-up and prosthetics can make Chriso'Donnell look older than 22, I thought he was OK.Make no mistake, this is not John Le Carre stuff: it is not drenched innihilism, pointlessness and failure, even though it does not seem to beJames Bond Universe either. More than anything, one is left with theimpression that all little treasons and nonsense aside, there is somesort of idealization and nostalgia for the Cold War, when you knew whothreatened you and why and why you had to fight ( even thought both CIAand KGB pictured themselves as the good guys and protectors of thecommon folk). Molina's character near the end summarizes a view of thecold war that seems to be prevalent these days, that the side whoscrewed up less won and that the USSR looked pretty good on paper butwas really flawed.If you consider that it's only been 17 years since the demise of theSoviet Union, this detachment is pretty impressive. But then it goes toshow how different the world has become today.

2012-04-30 07:06:19

Good, but poor choice of leading actor

Keaton and Molina did brilliantly here, as did Rory Cochrane and the fellow who played the KGB general. But O'Donnell was simply not believable as Jack McAuliffe. As a 50-year old, he looked and talked like a 20-something with prematurely gray hair. It reminded me of Kevin Costner in Robin Hood. Why they cast a guy who couldn't pull off an English accent still eludes me to this day. But aside from the credibility factor in the character of Jack McAuliffe, the rest of the film (and make no mistake - this was a film - it was simply made for the small screen instead of the big screen) was highly enjoyable.If I could sum up the film in one word, it would be "betrayal." Betrayal of people against their countries. Betrayal of people against one another. Betrayal of governments to support the people who were serving them. And betrayal of the United States to follow through and do the right thing when principle should have trumped political expediency.The production quality in this 3-part miniseries (6 hrs total) was outstanding. Frankly, this was a story that probably could not have been told in a usual 120 minute movie anyway, so I think when you look at the tradeoff between telling the story over the course of 6 hours on a small screen versus trying to tell it in 2 hrs on a large screen -- the producers chose exactly the right approach. I see that some others have criticized this for not dealing with Vietnam, Guatemala, and other obviously important facets of the cold war. But, honestly - unless you turned this into an entire season of 1- or 2-hour episodes that ran into 16 hours or more, how in the world are you going to do anything other than a drive-by? Answer: you aren't. Again, I think the producers struck the right balance here.Part one covers the period immediately following WWII. Part two deals with the Hungarian Revolution. And Part 3 takes us from the Bay of Pigs to the eventual dissolving of the USSR after a plan to destabilize Wall St. fails miserably and the grand experiment with communism runs out of gas. The series closes with Yeltsin succeeding Gorbachev and our lead character, Jack McAuliffe, expressing the obligatory questions about whether he'd devoted his career to simply one side of a chess game, or a side that was inherently right.I enjoyed it, and I recommend it. But in the end, it succeeds in spite of Mr. O'Donnell, not because of him. I like Chris O'Donnell well enough - he was simply miscast here and ultimately couldn't fill the shoes that the role required. Russell Crowe would have been a much better choice, but perhaps made-for-TV is beneath him at this point in his career. In all, the casting was superb, with the notable exception of O'Donnell.

sharkypal 2012-04-29 00:00:53

More "USA is the Best" nonsense.

I was really looking forward to this show given the quality of theactors and the fact that The Scott brothers were involved.Unfortunately my hopes were dashed! Yet again we are led to believethat the KGB are a group of inept morons who don't have a clue whatthey are doing. At one point there is a laughable scene where 4 KGBagents couldn't handle one CIA agent. I grow weary of these biased, onesided and completely inaccurate portrayals of the Spy game that went onduring the cold war. I find it laughable that the US is incapable ofmaking objective movies about their involvement in WW2 and beyond. Justlike the pathetic U-571, where we are led to believe that the USobtained the Enigma machine, again, utterly false.To its credit, "The Company" is very well filmed and acted. The localesare also exceptionally well realised. Alfred Molina puts in a greatperformance as does Keaton (The conflict between them is very welldone). I really wanted to like this show and no doubt I will end upwatching the other 2 episodes but I really wish that US productionswould stop trying to portray their Spies, servicemen etc as supermenwho are vastly intellectually and physically superior to anyone else onthe planet. It gets old fast and seriously detracts from theplausibility of what could have been a 10/10.S

2012-04-28 07:40:35

The Best CIA Movie Ever!!!!!!

This review is from: The Company (DVD) This movie is outstanding. The cast, the locations, direction, and story line come together and produce magic. Not too much action rather like "The Spy Who Came in From the Cold". A thinking man's spy movie. Let's face facts, most movies now are all computer generated massive special effects with little or no substance. Some people will not like this movie because it makes you think. I for one, have not given up this process and enjoy movies that encourage one to take a hard look at ourselves.

Sean Gallagher 2012-04-23 08:38:34

Disappointing adaptation

I haven't read enough of Robert Littell's novels to know if he's theAmerican version of Frederick Forsyth, Graham Greene, or my personalfavorite, John le Carre, but I've liked the novels of his I've read,and one day, I hope someone makes a good adaptation of one of them. THEAMATEUR, filmed in 1981, was faithful to the plot of the novel for themost part, but was done in a plodding, mechanical style and furtherhampered by a one-note performance by John Savage in the lead role;only Christopher Plummer's wry turn as the head of the Czech SecretService (he also poses as a professor) was worth watching. Thismade-for-TNT miniseries isn't as bad as THE AMATEUR, but it also fallsshort of the novel.Littell's novel was an epic roman a clef about the history of the CIA,with the usual blending of factual and fictional characters, and whileit traveled well-worn territory (and not quite as substantial in thatregard as le Carre's novels are), it's still an entertaining read.Obviously, when filming a long novel, even for a miniseries like this,some things have to go, but it's disappointing when great material ishere, and the adapters (director Mikael Solomon and writer Ken Nolan)don't bring it to life on screen.Part of the problem is it seems like a greatest-hits version of thenovel. You get the various incidents, like the Hungary uprising in1956, and the Bay of Pigs, but there's no flow to the story. Solomonand Littell also cut out the humor of the novel - the character ofYevgeny, the Russian agent, for example, has a great fatalism about him(in the book, when asked what one of the principles of Marxism (Ithink) is, he replies, "A spy in hand is worth two in the bush?"), andRory Cochrane could have played it as such, yet he does absolutelynothing with the part (he's certainly capable of it, so I'd like tothink it's not his fault). Also a lot of the subplots are given to thecharacter of Jack MacAuliffe, and Chris O'Donnell simply isn't equippedto handle them all. Speaking of O'Donnell, another problem is while thescope of the story is for 40 years, none of the characters really age,with the possible exception of Alfred Molina (as Harvey, code-named"The Sorcerer") and Michael Keaton (as real-life deputy director ofcounter-intelligence James Angleton). O'Donnell just looks likeO'Donnell with a gray wig. The only actors who make much of animpression are Molina and Keaton. Overall, "The Company", while notterrible, definitely could have been a lot better.

2012-04-22 11:57:08

Interesting & Well Acted

I Enjoyed This Mini-Series, Even Though It Was A Bit Slow To Start, The Acting Was Superb By The Entire Cast, I Recommend It To All Amazonian's

legoloso2 2012-04-16 13:28:04

Critque on first episode

Where to begin. The performances in the show are quite good the actionis established and the historical aspect of the show is right on inmost respects. The cast includes a few veteran actors and a few youngeractors. Rory Cochrane from CSI Miami, and Chris O'Donnell from theBatman* movies and the Bachelor are cast in very good roles. Followedby Alfred Molina and Michael Keaton taking on the leading roles, who Imight add fit there roles perfectly. Having only seen the first of thethree episodes and watching the preview for the next two I see that theshow will go on only to get better with the addition of even moreactors and cameo's from some of my personal favorites the outlook isgood. In my opinion espionage has never looked so good.

2012-04-16 02:27:39

not

I Didn't like it - not my type of movie - kind of boring - I don't recommended it - fast forward helped.

mpag 2012-04-09 11:27:08

Keaton's Performance

Michael Keaton's performance is spellbinding, astounding. I couldn'tbelieve what I was watching. When he's on screen, he lifts the pieceonto a wholly different level. Unreservedly worth watching for hisscreen time alone. The unnerving atmosphere he creates happily offsetsthe unfortunate mawkishness that marrs parts of the Berlin and Budapeststories. Alfred Molina also deserves praise for a strong, gutsyperformance as a permanently booze-fueled, no nonsense old time fieldcommander. Production values are pretty high for a television series -Ridley Scott's production presence no doubt helped on that front - andthe post-war look and atmosphere of the Berlin sequences isparticularly well realised. But this is unmistakably Keaton'stour-de-force.

2012-04-08 14:14:41

The Best mini-series in a long time

Years ago I gave up the spy novel for the crime novel, so I was hesitant to spend six hours in front of the tube to watch this miniseries. I was pleasantly suprised. Addicted, actually! Hyped for more! Great acting, photography and directing. Michael Keaton was AMAZING in his depiction of James Angleton.Sign me up for the DVD.