The Company [Blu-ray]

The Company [Blu-ray] Review

This is a excellent drama that has excellent production values. It's not totally
realistic in the way spies really work but it's better than some efforts. But most people won't notice that fact.
And in fact the real person; James Jesus Angleton as brillaintly protrayed by michael keatan did in fact keep a mole from ever being in the C.I.A. as long as he was there. He was beyond dilligent in this situation and was successful at it too. After he was gone however: Aldrich Ames became a insidious traitor and murderer that wasn't caught until 1994. Making him the agencies worst mole ever. But during Angletons' time noone was able to do it. The Soviets really got good info from the mid-sixties on from a naval traitor John Walker though. He would be the real "Sasha' but it he wasn't part of the C.I.A.
Anyways this miniseries is still excellent and engaging with great performances from everyone invovled. But Michael Keaton should have gotten a emmy for his fantastic job of one of the most important spy catchers in the history of espionage. The book is better than this series and that fact is probably true of 90% of the movies ever based on books. This blu ray edition looks fantastic and is a directors cut so it's longer than when it was on tv. This series is engaging and doesn't depict any of the spies as monsters or people butchering u.s. citizens like fiends. Many hollywood movies do just that and this one doesn't and is much better done than most spy flicks. It's good entertainment that is not on a anti Cia agenda like lets say 'three days of the condor" which is actually a good thriller but is a paranoid fantasy at heart. This one has large kernals of truth in it and that is better than most spy flicks out there.

The Company [Blu-ray] Overview

COMPANY (BR/2 DISC/WS 1.78 A/DD 5.1/PCM 5.1/ENG-SU

The Company [Blu-ray] Specifications

Handsomely mounted, epic in scope, and featuring an outstanding cast, TNT's The Company might restore some much-needed luster to the image of the Central Intelligence Agency (then again, perhaps not). Based on Robert Littell's popular historical novel of the same name, the show commingles real and invented characters as it traces the CIA's role in several major events, from the earliest days of the Cold War through the collapse of the Soviet Union, with particular attention given to the division of Berlin into East and West in the 1950s, the anti-Communist uprising in mid-'50s Hungary, and the disastrous Bay of Pigs operation in the early '60s.

The first of the miniseries' three parts introduces us to Yale graduates Jack McAuliffe (Chris O'Donnell), Leo Kritzky (Alessandro Nivola), and Yevgeny Tsipin (Rory Cochrane); the first two are recruited by the CIA, but the Russian-born Tsipin sides with the KGB. The initial focus is on the CIA's efforts to find a Soviet mole who's been interfering with the agency's work and putting many American lives at risk. Working with mentor Harvey "The Sorcerer" Torriti (Alfred Molina), who calls him "Sport" and delights in pointing out that such matters are nothing less than a life-and-death struggle between good and evil and right and wrong, McAuliffe skulks around Berlin, where his principal informant and soon-to-be love interest is a lovely young ballerina (Alexandra Maria Lara) with a few secrets of her own. Meanwhile, back in Washington, the colorfully-named CIA counter-intelligence expert James Jesus Angleton (a real guy portrayed with low-key intensity by Michael Keaton) slowly realizes that the mole in question is one of his old pals. And it doesn't stop there. Turns out there's another double agent (codename "Sasha") working for the Reds; this one's deeply embedded in the CIA, and Angleton, a chain-smoking obsessive whose behavior becomes increasingly cold and peculiar, devotes years (and most of the series' third installment) to outing him. The process by which he does just that, culminating in some fairly excruciating interrogation scenes, provides The Company's best moments--especially because we don't know until the very end whether Angleton has fingered the actual Sasha or not.

Viewers unfamiliar with the CIA's history and methods aren’t likely to be very encouraged by what's depicted here--especially in the second part, in which the agency's misadventures in Hungary and Cuba reveal it (as well as the U.S. government overall) to be not merely ineffective but disastrously inept, as well as shockingly callous and hypocritical when it comes to lending material support to the causes it claims to espouse. Still, the series does a good job with many of the elements common to such fare (Robert De Niro's 2006 film The Good Shepherd covers some of the same ground). Codes are written and deciphered. Secrets are kept… and revealed. Shots are fired, and some of them connect. People die, good and bad alike. And even if some of the scenes are a bit overheated and melodramatic, all in all, The Company (which was written by Ken Nolan, directed by Mikael Salomon, and produced by John Calley and Ridley and Tony Scott) is smart and entertaining. And some of it's even true. --Sam Graham

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