If treason is "different then Kim Philby's "loyalty" to Britain was very different. I watched this film for Rupert Everett after reading his auto-biography . I know little about Kim Philby , I am still puzzled as to why Sharon Stone wanted the names changed. The start of the film is awful , rather corny but I don't think the budget was enormous. It had to set the scene of M.I.6 and that there were traitors within. We just about get that idea. As the right names are not used the escape of Burgess and Mc Clean is a bit odd . If you have watched "Another Country" you might have some idea of what decided Guy Burgess to betray the U.K .
We are then taken back to Beirut in the early 1960s with Sharon Stone playing a bored American woman( whose husband is always away) who falls in love with "Leo" ( Kim) . How accurate the love story is portrayed I can't be sure . After she marries Leo and then he just walks out only to disappear Sharon is very good as a distraught woman left alone , afraid and almost helpless . She is helped by Leo's best friend ( also in M.I.6) .The Lebanese authorities are onto the case , obviously the whole of the western allies would have been horrified as Philby was a quite high-ranking official. She leaves for London with Leo's children , her own daughter has gone back to the U.S with her father. If this movie makes us look up more information about all of the Cambridge spies then it was worth making. I think "Another Country" leaves me feeling that Burgess was just bitter about his treatment as a homosexual ( and really it's fair to say with good reason). I don't know what made Philby a Soviet sympathiser but as an intelligent man he must have been rather saddened by the reality of his chosen country. We see Sharon's character try hard by visiting him in Russia to decide between her country , her daughter possibly and the man she loved but didn't have a clue about his politics. On first viewing I could not understand her choice but in the context of the times Russia really was the enemy of freedom and her life would have been one of being followed and suspected until she died . It's a reasonable attempt to tell an important story with two very good actors but it's budget couldn't cope with such a vast subject. It needed a series , not a film.
We are then taken back to Beirut in the early 1960s with Sharon Stone playing a bored American woman( whose husband is always away) who falls in love with "Leo" ( Kim) . How accurate the love story is portrayed I can't be sure . After she marries Leo and then he just walks out only to disappear Sharon is very good as a distraught woman left alone , afraid and almost helpless . She is helped by Leo's best friend ( also in M.I.6) .The Lebanese authorities are onto the case , obviously the whole of the western allies would have been horrified as Philby was a quite high-ranking official. She leaves for London with Leo's children , her own daughter has gone back to the U.S with her father. If this movie makes us look up more information about all of the Cambridge spies then it was worth making. I think "Another Country" leaves me feeling that Burgess was just bitter about his treatment as a homosexual ( and really it's fair to say with good reason). I don't know what made Philby a Soviet sympathiser but as an intelligent man he must have been rather saddened by the reality of his chosen country. We see Sharon's character try hard by visiting him in Russia to decide between her country , her daughter possibly and the man she loved but didn't have a clue about his politics. On first viewing I could not understand her choice but in the context of the times Russia really was the enemy of freedom and her life would have been one of being followed and suspected until she died . It's a reasonable attempt to tell an important story with two very good actors but it's budget couldn't cope with such a vast subject. It needed a series , not a film.