The Kremlin Letter Reviews

During a directorial career that spanned five decades, John Huston dabbled in just about every possible type of genre film from overheated melodramas (In This Our Life, Reflections in a Golden Eye) to musicals (Annie), screen biographies (Moulin Rouge, Freud), mysteries (The List of Adrian Messenger), noirs (The Asphalt Jungle), and even produced more than a few classics along the way (The Maltese Falcon, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, The African Queen). He also did a couple of espionage pictures during the latter part of his career, but neither The Mackintosh Man nor The Kremlin Letter gained much popularity. Twilight Time's release of The Kremlin Letter brings this Cold War thriller to DVD for the first time, and while it's not a great success as a movie, it deserves a bit more recognition than it received at the time of its release. It's an occasionally taut, tantalizing thriller that holds one's attention for two hours, its weaknesses tied more to some muddled storytelling and an abruptly shoehorned-in romance than the labyrinthine plot that takes a few viewings to work out all the kinks.

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