Review of The Quiller Memorandum

I wanted to make a list of all the things that are wrong with this film, but I can't - such a list would need much more than a thousand words. People tend to like it because "it's not like the Bond movies"; well, it's not - it's like "The Ipcress File", except that "The Ipcress File" was a genuinely smart and atmospheric movie, while "The Quiller Memorandum" is a clumsy, dated spy thriller full of pseudo-hip dialogue and plot holes. And considering how terrible its one fight scene is, it's certainly a blessing that it doesn't have any more. George Segal is a fine and always engaging actor, but the way his character is written here, he doesn't really come across as "a spy who gets along by his brains and not by his brawn"; he seems interested almost exclusively in the girl he meets, not in the case he's investigating, and (at least until the end) he seems to survive as a result of a combination of his good luck and the stupidity of the villains. I'll give this horribly dated film a generous **1/2 rating anyway; hell, you don't see a cast as great as this one every day!