Review of The Kremlin Letter

I've watched this movie a number of times since shortly after it was released, and my appreciation for it has declined over time. Huston not only directed but wrote the screenplay, so you know going in it's no fool's work. He tried to do something more serious more serious than a James Bond movie. By piercing the gray exterior of Soviet life, it disrupted some stereotypes and assumptions that our propaganda had created, such as not being able to enter a country like the USSR without being detected, and that Soviet officials were boring bureaucrats who weren't corrupt high-livers, and that criminality was not widespread in the Soviet Union as elsewhere. The problem is that Huston just made up a lot of stuff, or made it look as though he had in a rather clumsy way, and couldn't resist some completely implausible James Bond touches. Thirteen years later "Gorky Park" improved considerably on this groundwork, though not without similar errors. For pointing the way, though not for his own offering, Huston deserves credit.