The Whistle Blower (1987)

Holy crap Michael Caine was awesome.  If you’ve followed any espionage history from the past and/or have an interest, go watch this one.  There’s not much else to say really.  How does a nation recover from Blunt, Maclean and Philby?  What would happen if they found out there were more?  What would the British government be willing to do to maintain their liaison with the US?  When are we going to done with the zero-sum strategists?  How do they recover after the Suez and a reversal of WWII relationships with the CIA?  How do the people respond to find out their government and it’s security services are just the same as the Americans?  What happens when the unthinkable happens to you and to your family?

The past 70 years have been hard on national moral virtues the world over.  Maybe our only hope is still on individual moral fiber and virtue.  Maybe since a country isn’t a person, it’s no longer safe to attempt to categorize it as a person?  Oh, and corporations aren’t people either.

“If you told a majority of people that a bloke called Jones was about to breach our security service when he fell off a roof and was killed.  They would say, ‘serves him right’.  If you told them he’d been pushed, they’d say, ‘what do you expect?’ and so would I because up until now I was part of that majority.  I would have said you don’t sign on for something like that and then break your word.”

and at the end:

“I”ll tell you what I want.  I want to believe in England again.”


UPDATE:  Go watch the Harry Palmer movies first.  At least the first 3 and then watch this movie and see what they did by hiring Michael Caine to play the father.