{"id":8238,"date":"2024-11-12T00:25:25","date_gmt":"2024-11-12T05:25:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/?p=8238"},"modified":"2024-11-12T00:25:25","modified_gmt":"2024-11-12T05:25:25","slug":"the-little-drummer-girl","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/2024\/11\/12\/the-little-drummer-girl\/","title":{"rendered":"The Little Drummer Girl"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"The Little Drummer Girl <\/strong>(1984)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Warner Bros.\/Action-Thriller\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 131 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (language, violence, terrorism, brief graphic nudity, some sexual content)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: George Roy Hill\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Loring Mandel\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Dave Grusin\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Wolfgang Treu\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: October 19, 1984 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Diane Keaton, Yorgo Voyagis, Klaus Kinski, Sami Frey, Michael Christofer, Eli Danker, Ben Levine, Jonathan Sagall, Shlomit Hagoel, Moti Shirin, David Suchet, Bill Nighy.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Box Office: $7.8M (US)<\/p>\n

Rating<\/strong>: ** \u00bd <\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0The Little Drummer Girl<\/strong> is one of those movies that should have been great given its pedigree. It’s based on a novel by best-selling spy author John le Carre (The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy). It\u2019s directed by George Roy Hill (Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid, The Sting). It stars Academy Award winner Diane Keaton (Annie Hall). SHE\u2019S THE PROBLEM! She\u2019s badly miscast in the lead role. She\u2019s clearly older than the character\u2019s 26 years. Also, I never once believed her as a spy. It\u2019s a big misstep that keeps the movie from reaching its full potential.<\/p>\n

\u00a0The Little Drummer Girl <\/strong>literally starts off with a bang. An Israeli diplomat\u2019s home is blown up by the PLO. The Mossad, headed by Martin Kurtz (Kinski, Fitzcarraldo), recruits Charlie Ross (Keaton), an American actress working in Britain, to infiltrate the Palestinians and identify the terrorist known as Khalil. He\u2019s the one behind the bombing. It\u2019s something of a conflict for Charlie as she\u2019s anti-Zionist. She hates all the killing. All she wants is peace in the Middle East.<\/p>\n

\u00a0They convince Charlie to help them flush out Khalil by posing as the girlfriend of his brother Michel (Shirin) who they have in custody. This means joining their organization and participating in acts of terrorism. She eventually ends up at a desert camp where she is trained as a guerrilla.<\/p>\n

\u00a0I guess nobody ever told Charlie that love and espionage don\u2019t mix. Against all better judgment, she falls for her handler \u201cJoseph\u201d (Voyagis, Zorba the Greek) after initially thinking he\u2019s the masked PLO member she heard speak in Dorset. He\u2019s the one who reels her in to help the Israelis deal with the ongoing threat against their people.<\/p>\n

\u00a0That\u2019s what The Little Drummer Girl<\/strong> is about more or less. It\u2019s a rather convoluted affair. The events of the story are jumbled and you’re never quite sure of the motivations of the characters. I’m guessing the book is pretty complex and trying to condense it all into 131 minutes is a difficult undertaking. Truthfully, I prefer the 2018 miniseries starring Florence Pugh who\u2019s far more believable than Keaton in the title role. She a great actress who\u2019s done some stellar work. She can do righteous indignation well as anyone who\u2019s seen her in Reds (1981) will concur. She is all wrong for to play Charlie. Jodie Foster would have been a better choice. She definitely would have done the role justice.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Kinski, one of my favorite sinister character actors, does well as the head of the Mossad, a man you\u2019re never quite sure has Charlie\u2019s best interests at heart. He\u2019s a spy, spies lie for a living, you do the math. I don\u2019t know if it\u2019s a language barrier thing, but Greek actor Voyagis is fairly wooden. He didn\u2019t really make any sort of impression on me.<\/p>\n

\u00a0I will concede that there are some tense moments in The Little Drummer Girl<\/strong> like the scene where Charlie is supposed to park a car packed with explosives in front of a cafe. An American tourist sees she\u2019s having trouble parking and guides her. The Mossad agents watching her will likely kill him if he makes a perceived wrong move. Unfortunately, there aren\u2019t too many scenes like this. There\u2019s a lot of talking which is normal for le Carre. The characters discuss Israel-Palestine politics as they relate to Charlie\u2019s involvement in the operation. It\u2019s interesting, but the movie only scratches the surface.<\/p>\n

\u00a0The real question at hand is whether or not I liked The Little Drummer Girl<\/strong>, right? For the most part, I enjoyed it. I like a good espionage thriller that deals with politics and terrorism. It’s not a boring movie where you keep looking at your watch or the time counter on the DVD player to see if it’s almost over. It’s actually a compelling piece of work, one that will have the viewer wishing that it had been a better overall film.<\/p>\n

\u00a0The Little Drummer Girl<\/strong> bombed when it came out in fall \u201984. I’m actually not surprised. Movies are supposed to be escapist fare, and at the time this movie was made, the conflict between the Jews and Arabs and the activities of the PLO were a nightly feature on the news. The public tends not to shell out money for a film about current events, especially ugly ones like the conflict in the Middle East.<\/p>\n

\u00a0I didn\u2019t see The Little Drummer Girl<\/strong> at the cinema. I didn\u2019t watch it in its entirety until years later when I could fully understand and appreciate it. It moves slowly, but it held my interest. Even so, it\u2019s still something of a disappointment, especially with a filmmaker as competent as Hill guiding things. It really should have been something. It has some good stuff in it, but it doesn\u2019t add up to much.\"\"<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Little Drummer Girl (1984)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Warner Bros.\/Action-Thriller\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 131 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (language, violence, terrorism, brief graphic nudity, some sexual content)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: George Roy Hill\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Loring Mandel\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Dave Grusin\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Wolfgang Treu\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: October 19, 1984 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Diane Keaton, Yorgo Voyagis, Klaus Kinski, Sami Frey, Michael Christofer, Eli Danker, Ben Levine, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":8443,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8238","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-suspense-thrillers"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/The-Little-Drummer-Girl-PIC.jpg?fit=620%2C348&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8238","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8238"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8238\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8445,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8238\/revisions\/8445"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8443"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8238"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8238"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8238"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}