The Russia House

4.00
    The Russia House
    1990

    Synopsis

    Barley Scott Blair, a Lisbon-based editor of Russian literature who unexpectedly begins working for British intelligence, is commissioned to investigate the purposes of Dante, a dissident scientist trapped in the decaying Soviet Union that is crumbling under the new open-minded policies.

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    Cast

    • Sean ConneryBartholomew 'Barley' Scott Blair
    • Michelle PfeifferKatya Orlova
    • Roy ScheiderRussell
    • James FoxNed
    • John MahoneyBrady
    • Michael KitchenClive
    • J.T. WalshColonel Quinn
    • Ken RussellWalter
    • David ThrelfallWicklow
    • Klaus Maria BrandauerDante

    Recommendations

    • 91

      Entertainment Weekly

      It’s the lead actors who give the movie its surprisingly emotional texture. Connery is masterly as the boozing, disheveled, sentimental Barley — a hipster gone to seed — and he and Pfeiffer have a touching chemistry.
    • 90

      Washington Post

      The Russia House doesn't sweep you off your feet; it works more insidiously than that, flying in under your radar. If it is like any of its characters, it's like Katya. It's reserved, careful to declare itself but full of potent surprises. It's one of the year's best films.
    • 80

      Los Angeles Times

      Schepisi may have made the first truly and intelligently uplifting spy movie. His style here is magisterial yet playful: The melancholy grandeur of Russia, on view at last for the whole world to see, has turned him into an eye-popping enthusiast.
    • 80

      Chicago Reader

      Apart from a certain implausibility in the film's initial premise, this is a first-rate entertainment that captures Le Carre's jaundiced if morally sensitive vision with a great deal of care and feeling.
    • 75

      Rolling Stone

      At its best, The Russia House offers a rare and enthralling spectacle: the resurrection of buried hopes.
    • 70

      Washington Post

      In The Russia House, an extremely pleasant but lightweight espionage drama set in the glasnost age, Connery brings that charisma to bear and, with co-star Michelle Pfeiffer's help, makes the movie work.
    • 70

      Variety

      John le Carre's glasnost-era espionage novel has been turned into intelligent adult entertainment, but somber tone, utter lack of action and sex, and complexity of plot tilts this mainly to upscale audience.
    • 60

      Time Out

      Overtaken by East-West events, and with an over-optimistic ending which sets personal against political loyalty, it's still highly enjoyable, wittily written, and beautiful to behold in places, at others somehow too glossy for its own good.

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