The Falcon and the Snowman

The spy next door
Based on a true story, the film details how two young men sold U.S. secrets to the Soviets in the mid-seventies during the height of American apathy and disillusion.

Taken from the excellent non-fiction book by Robert Lindsey, director John Schlesinger's film does a fine job of creating the feeling and temperament of the time but stumbles in a couple of important areas, though the leads, Timothy Hutton as Christopher Boyce and Sean Penn as Daulton Lee, are in terrific form.

Boyce was the "falcon" as he dabbled in falconry, Daulton the "snowman" due to his dealing cocaine, or snow.

Boyce was the oldest of a large Catholic family whose father was retired FBI. Boyce was given a job too quickly with TRW, at the time working with the CIA on secret projects. Working from the "Black Vault," Boyce eventually decided to sell the information he saw to the Soviets. His drug dealing childhood friend Lee became the courier who transported the data...

Christopher Boyce
I enjoyed this movie immensely. It was fairly true to life and very well done. Hutton and Penn are terrific and Schlesinger does an excellent job in directing.
For those of you that are curious, Christopher Boyce will be released from a halfway house in San Francisco on March 15, 2003. He will be paroled after 25 years in prison, including spending time in SuperMax in Colorado, alongside Oklahoma City bombers Timothy J. McVeigh and Terry L. Nichols, and the Unabomber, Theodore J. Kaczynski. (Information taken from the LA Times story "The Falcon and the Fallout" by Richard A. Serrano, published March 2, 2003.)

still looks great
This has become one of my very favorite films. One reason is that this is when I began to see how really brilliant Sean Penn is, but I think it's more about how this film captures its time, and the dangers of naive idealism. The affluent surburban young men here both find ways to reject the perceived shallowness of their parents, the corruption of their government and the numbing reality of their circumscribed lives, but end up discovering even darker and more painful realities.

Schlesinger makes the most of his excellent cast and gets some of the most memorable performances ever from veterans like Pat Hingle and Richard Dysart. David Suchet is fantastic in his portrayal of a cold, professional KGB operative trying to deal with Sean Penn as a rapidly unravelling drug dealer.

Skip the useless scenes between Tim Hutton and a confused-looking Lori Singer and what remains is a memorable film really worth owning.

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