Livestonth I am only giving this movie a 1 for the great cast, though I can't imagine what any of them were thinking. This movie was horrible

Zlatica One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

Juana what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

Roxie The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;

Mark Turner Author Ken Follett was making a name for himself long before the current crop of spy thriller authors came along. Along with a few other writers he took on the job of creating a believable world of spies in the tradition of Ian Fleming's James Bond and the sales of their books led to those being created today. In 1976 he wrote the novel EYE OF THE NEEDLE and in 1981 it was made into a feature film. The movie didn't do amazing box office but it did offer a well thought out slow burn spy thriller that takes place in WWII.It's shortly before D-Day and preparations are in order to launch an attack against Germany by the allied forces. Germany has been doing their best to infiltrate England and the find out when the attack will come and where it will come from. Inserted into the country their top spy, a ruthless assassin and sociopath, has discovered that a fake mockup has been created to divert the Germans. As he is about to be caught he escapes to a remote island and now must wait to be picked up by a U-boat.The spy is Heinrich Faber (Donald Sutherland), known as "The Needle" because of his weapon of choice for assassination is a stiletto. When he arrives at the island he meets its only inhabitants, the disabled man of the house David (Christopher Cazenove), his wife Lucy (Kate Nelligan) and their young son Joe. Counting on their hospitality he stays with them a few days. In that short amount of time a romance between Faber and Lucy unfolds, two lonely people for different reasons brought together.For Faber his life is one of solitude and the opportunity for a connection to another human being is rare at best. For Lucy we have a woman whose husband has withdrawn from the world due to the injury that left him disabled. We are presented with two people who should not have the affair that they do but because of the situations life has left them in they find one another.David becomes suspicious of Faber and looks into just who he is and what he has with him. The result of his investigation is murder at the hands of Faber. When Lucy realizes what is going on it is left to her to stop this spy from contacted his U-boat and taking information with him that will cause England to lose the war. With her life and that of her young son in the way will she be up to the task at hand? And will the romance that came between the two prevent either from doing what they must? The movie is a slow burn, a thriller that unspools the story at a pace that offers more story than action. It takes its time to place the characters in the right place, to maneuver them into emotional moments and to allow the viewer to get to know each of them before events occur. We understand why David is bitter, why Lucy is lonely and why Faber is determined to complete his mission. Life is messy and the intersecting of these three people shows how unpredictable it can be.Director Richard Marquand has done a fantastic job of creating both the remote location of the small island with the remote feelings on hand in the characters. It is this combination that pulls us in to wonder what will happen, to hope for the best and to fear the worst. The fact that Faber at any moment could just kill all three people, including a young child, makes him one of the more dangerous characters seen on film. And yet we understand why Lucy is drawn to him due to her circumstances.All of the actors involved give it their best. It isn't a splashy movie but a subtle one and their performances match that subtlety. For me this was the second film I'd seen Nelligan in, the first being Dracula. She does a great job here but for some reason never made it to mega-star status. She should have. Sutherland shows that his acting chops were not a fluke in and that he is incredibly talented.As I said the movie did respectable business but was not a smash hit. Fortunately we have the chance to see it in pristine condition with this release from Twilight Time. The odds of finding a better looking edition of this movie are unlikely. Extras include an isolated score track, audio commentary with music historian Jon Burlingame and film historians Julie Kirgo and Nick Redman and the original theatrical trailer. As with all Twilight Time editions this one is limited to just 3,000 copies so fans will want to make sure they pick one up before they are gone.

sjdevlin I'm amazed that this movie gets such good reviews on Amazon and IMDb. Its a real turkey. Production values are all over the place. Some big period sets, and some laughably bad ones. The scene of the boat in the storm looks like something from Airplane. The first half rips along as if they are trying to cram a mini series into one episode. The second half is far too drawn out. The acting and direction is completely wooden. The score is also completely overblown. Donald Sutherland seems to specialise in these turkeys.It feels like 1st year film project. Some of the edits are terrible! I can't believe it doesn't have more negative reviews. Maybe there are lots of Star Wars fans (same director as return of the Jedi). Totally corny and forgettable.

jzappa From a distance, an everyday moviegoer might doubt the production value of this movie. A 1982 Ken Follett adaptation that's hardly available on DVD? Well, it's made by the same director as Return of the Jedi. Yet when it begins and unfolds, it's reminiscent of nothing so much as one of those unsentimental, persevering, discreetly disturbing, and, on a few occasions, blackly hilarious war movies that used to be made by the former British film industry. Donald Sutherland plays the kind of reserved sociopath who should ideally thrive in black-and-white movies, yet the color here is sometimes funereal enough to avail. This unaffected thriller is made with humble potency.It is about a German spy, Die Naadel, who dropped out of sight in Germany in 1938 and now inhabits a series of drab bed-sitting-rooms in England while he spies on the British war effort. He is known as the Needle because of his signature means of dispatch. He kills with an exceptional absence of feeling. As played by Sutherland with a rather stand-offish, cool, and even critical manner, the Needle is a man no one knows. We are given inklings to account for his rationale: He was raised by parents who did not love him, he was shipped off to boarding schools, he spent parts of his childhood in America, where he learned English. None of the account altogether clears up his viciousness, but then I suppose it is no more than a secret agent's business to be vicious. Perhaps it's no one's fault someone is ruthless.Ken Follett's deftly communicated thread is by inches both undercover operations and mystery. The Needle unravels a hoax to evade the Germans. His task is to be the very one to confront Die Fuhrer with the information of the actual Allied invasion plans. This he means to do with every tissue of his being, and yet we never get the sense that this man is a nationalist. He is more of an existentially decisive, unbending envoy. In his endeavors to convene with a Nazi submarine, he's shipwrecked on a remote island populated merely by a lighthouse keeper and a goat-farming family comprised of a woman played by the emotionally receptive Kate Nelligan, her legless husband and their son.The last third of the movie turns into a blood-spattered drama in which the action is more pertinent than the characterization. But before that, he poses as just a shipwrecked seafarer. And Nelligan, her appearance fittingly preceded by her co-star being adrift at sea, is disheartened by her husband's drunkenness and unwillingness to love, and becomes endeared to the stranger. Does he become enamored of her? We can never be certain, though he tells her things he has told to no one else.It is compelling to build a plot like this at a studious tread, rather than rushing head on through it. It gives us time to weigh the character of the Needle, and to contemplate his exceptionally scant, mysterious allusions to what he feels versus what he thinks. Instead of an unambiguously good and evil clash, despite the melodrama of the last act, we have by then learned things about him that he may not even know about himself, and that is why the film's final scene is so much more intricate than it appears.

moonspinner55 Richard Marquand directs this well-wrought adaptation of Ken Follett's bestselling book concerning a vicious German spy on assignment in London during WWII who takes refuge with an unsuspecting British couple. Donald Sutherland does superlative work in the tricky lead, second-guessing every situation while seducing naïve Kate Nelligan in the bargain, without regard to her smarts and efficiency. The film's atmosphere is purposefully cold, and Marquand is intentionally careful and calculating, but those who stick with this will find the plot-threads absorbing and the performances extremely effective. Ardent admirers of Follett's novel were unhappy with the woman-in-distress finale, yet it certainly works for the picture, and Nelligan emerges as an actress of uncanny grace and bravery. **1/2 from ****