It's Walter Matthau starring as a CIA operative who gets screwed over in the long run and reduced to office work. But instead of just taking the job or running away to join another intelligent agency.
He takes to writing a memoir in where he'll expose Secrets of the CIA, KGB in a few other intelligence agencies.
But he won't just write the Memoirs and publish them. Oh no. He'll send out in small drafts to every agency just to show them what he's doing. To eggs them on, to make them regret pushing him out of the game.
It's from these actions that the film evolves into a Chase movie.
The film is broken mainly between two parts.
Walter Matthau running away, preparing to run away, calling his (kind of) girlfriend or just sitting around in a nice location (like a pub) drinking a surprising amount of beer.
The other half of the movie is a fairly large chunk of the CIA (and a few other agencies) trying to track him down and constantly getting bamboozled or surprised by Walter's cunning.
They're led by Ned Beatty who's running this District of the CIA. And my God! Does he like to say the F word a lot in this film. It's kind of strange because if you tone down the swearing you can make this a PG film with no effort.
There's nothing raunchy or deprived about the film. It's just a simple movie of Walter Matthau running from one location to another. I suppose the good thing about it being in our film is you don't have to worry about any secondary characteristics that might come into question with a lower grade movie. Such as the drinking or smoking. Although this is the 1980s and nobody cares about any of that yet.
For some reason the poster has Glenda Jackson's photo next to Walter Matthau. Which is kind of weird because that's Ned Beatty's picture in the movie.
That was the whole point. Walter uses his own bosses house as one of his Hideout locations.
All in all it's a fairly solid flick. It's a Walter Matthau Centric movie. Which is fine by me. If you're expecting any great performances out of anybody else you might be a little disappointed. Everyone else feels more like a proc than a person. But still it's a fun experience and it's amusing to see how Walter gets from one spot to the next.
His romance with Glenda Jackson is a really cute affair.
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