The Spy Who Never Was (1976) User Reviews

THE YOUNG TAKE ARMS FOR PEACE

[nogodnomasters · 6/10 · 11 June 2019]

Jason Robards plays a brandy swigging, cane hobbling investigator in this production which is more drama than action. A group of terrorists is being hunted in the age old Arab-Israeli conflict. A fiction person of high importance is fabricated by Israeli intelligence so they can track the European terrorist group wanting to find him. A prominent lawyer named Hersfeld is mistaken for the fictional man Herzog as he becomes the target of Arab assassination.

The film shows its age with poor quality transfer. The Arab terrorists read poetry while a candle is lit and posters of Che and Mao are on the wall and flute music is playing. Nothing like combining art, terrorist, communists, and hippies as the agents against Israeli and goodness. That scene in itself might make a worth while view in a history of film as reflective of cultural views. Otherwise the action and drama don't live up to 21st century standards. The film is slow.

Also under the title "The Spy Who Never Was."

Parental Guide: No f-bombs. Sex and Nudity (Gila Almagor)

All I have left is hate! Please don't that that away from me!

[sol-kay · 7 August 2011]

***SPOILERS*** Slow boring and disjointed spy thriller with Jason Robards Jr who's between or just finished making the film "All the Presidents Men" as tough as well as handicapped,he walks with a crutch, Isreali anti-terrorist inspector Barken. Inspector Barken is barking up the wrong tree in him trying to track down an Arab terrorist ring in Jerusalem if he thinks that Jewish/German corporate lawyer Arthur Hersfeld, Hardy Kruger,is of any help in helping him get the job done. Robards to his credit kept himself scarce during most of the movie hoping that people watching it will by either falling asleep or walking out, before he comes on the scene, completely forget that he was ever in the movie!

As for Hersfeld he gets involved with all this cloak & dagger stuff almost by accident when he's mistaken at the Hamburg Airport in being Israeli super spy Hurzog by the Arab terrorist waiting for him there in order to knock him off! We find out early in the movie that this Hurzog fellow in nothing but a fake or plant by the Israelis in order to draw the Arab terrorists out in the open and then have the Israeli Mossad and special forces finish them off.

Kruger who looked and acted like he didn't really want to be in the film, even as its leading man, but needed the money does his best to be convincing as a man on the run from both the Arabs & Israelis. But he's so bad in doing it that he comes across as if he's gotten confused by getting off the wrong stop on his bus instead or running for his life with danger lurking in every twist and turn that he makes.

We also get to see, with and without her clothes on, beautiful and deadly Gila Almagor as rich and spoiled as well as Arab terrorist diva or femme fatal Amina. It's Amina who ends up having an affair with the half Jewish and son of holocaust survivors Arthur Hersfeld who despite given order by her superiors in the terrorist organization to knock him off, in them thinking that he's Israeli super spy Hurzog, just can't bring herself to assassinate him.****SPOILER ALERT*** That's until he movie gets so boring and ridicules with Arthur or Hardy Kruger having difficulty keeping a straight face in the dialog he's been given that he's finally killed off, by Amina & friends, so that the audience, or whatever is left of it, can finally be speared any more suffering.

P.S Check out little Jennifer Jason Leigh as the girl with the bouncing ball in her debut movie role.

A slog to sit through

[Leofwine_draca · 4/10 · 10 September 2019]

THE DEATH MERCHANTS is a rather slow and uninteresting spy drama made as a collaboration between Israel and West Germany. Inevitably the Israeli secret police are the heroes here (in the form of Jason Robards) while a group of Arab terrorists are creating havoc around the world. A disinterested Hardy Kruger is the guy caught in the middle of the situation due to a case of mistaken identity, and various tired shenanigans follow. There's the occasional murder alongside a lengthy romantic sub-plot, and despite real-world locations this never quite fires up the way it should. It's one of those films which is a slog to sit through.