Beanbioca As Good As It Gets

ShangLuda Admirable film.

filippaberry84 I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

Fleur Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

SnoopyStyle It's 1981 West Germany. Katrin delivers a bomb made by mysterious PLO bomb-maker Khalil killing an Israeli diplomat and his family. Charlie (Diane Keaton) is a naive pro-Palestinian actress. She is in Greece to do a job. When she spots Joseph, she believes him to be the masked Palestinian spokesman whose meeting she attended. He's actually an Israeli Mossad agent and they had taken the real masked man who is Khalil's brother Michel. The whole Greece trip is an Israeli trick. They reveal themselves to her and Martin Kurtz (Klaus Kinski) recruits her to be the brother's girlfriend to infiltrate Khalil's group.John le Carré's brand of espionage stories is often muddled. His world is a murky chaotic vision where questionable things are done which are often not the right course of action. Having said that, I don't understand why the Israelis would ever recruit Charlie. It doesn't make sense to me. I don't see Charlie helping the Israelis or ever believe them enough to really help them. They don't need the recruit to be Jewish, just not anti-Israeli. It might make sense if they pretend to be another terrorist group hoping to connect to Khalil. It's simply hard to understand the Israeli's course of action. Charlie's motivation for her journey is way too twisty. If one can ignore the questionable motivations, the plot is an intriguing twisty affair.

wrchadwell This is the best movie ever made about counter-terrorism. John LeCarre had obviously done his homework on Operation "Wrath of God," the Israeli operation to track down and eliminate the perpetrators of the 1972 Munich Olympic massacre, when he wrote the book this film was based on. The fact that both the 1972 Olympics were in Germany and much of the film is set (and filmed) in Germany only scratches the surface of the parallels. The trade-craft of covert operations in "The Little Drummer Girl" is so realistic the picture could be used as a training film. Klaus Kinski is particularly excellent as the chief of the Mossad team. I hope to see "The Little Drummer Girl" on DVD soon.

rwd4evr Oh, God, this movie was wretched. I saw it once when it first came out, 20 years ago, and still remember how awful it was.Don't worry about spoilers; I have no idea what the storyline was. All I remember is Diane Keaton just whining and wailing her way through the whole 5 hrs (oh, it was only an hour or two? coulda fooled me...). I don't think the writers, director or cast had any inkling of what they were doing or where they were going, and that's probably why Keaton's performance seemed so pointless.Who else was in it? Darned if I know.../r

Quentintarantado The director is weak, the original story is great. What can I say, I'm an avid le Carre fan! To paraphrase Sidney Bruhl (Michael Caine in Deathrap, 1982) it's a story so good a bad director can't f**k it up. Check out the other comments, I agree with them. Klaus Kinski is great, he chews the scenery, and the supporting cast are all mini-gems. I was trying to decide if I liked Yorgo Voyagis, and I do. He may be too still for some people, but I believe Diane when she falls in love with him. And he has haunted eyes when he has to do bad things which are necessary for the Cause. Diane Keaton is so miscast. She's too old, she can't be an American doing St. Joan in England! She's good, but she can't be Charlie, she just can't. Maybe Helena Bonham-Carter, or Vanessa Redgrave when she was young, oh heck, there must be hundreds of english actresses slavering for this role at that time.Nevertheless, I love the movie despite Diane Keaton (she does a good job, it's just I can't buy her in the role!).