TrueJoshNight Truly Dreadful Film

Ensofter Overrated and overhyped

Merolliv I really wanted to like this movie. I feel terribly cynical trashing it, and that's why I'm giving it a middling 5. Actually, I'm giving it a 5 because there were some superb performances.

Orla Zuniga It is interesting even when nothing much happens, which is for most of its 3-hour running time. Read full review

aejm Agree completely with the other reviewers who reflect that every word in the Sandbaggers scripts is crucial. The dialog in this excellent program comes thick and fast. Don't watch Sandbaggers if you are tired and don't multi-task ... this one requires complete concentration and attention to keep up with the story and shifting sands of the characters' relationships. I have not seen this since 2003 on DVD, and plan to watch it again this year in 2010. Need to work up to the commitment, but cannot wait. If you have not seen this before and enjoy the cold-war genre, don't miss out. The commitment is absolutely worth it and you will surely not be disappointed.For those that do love the genre, delighted that the monochrome episodes of Callan are now out. Hope that the excellent Game, Set and Match, and the even more excellent Ashenden come out on DVD soon.

michaelj108 The best line in all the episodes is in the first one, titled "First Principles." The odious Neil Burnside flies to Oslo only to rebuke his Norwegian colleague face-to-face with a short, sharp lecture delivered at the boarding gate of the airplane, brusk and aggressive as Burnside nearly always is, on what it takes to succeed in the Cold War. Burnside says the Norwegians must learn more about how intelligence works and that takestime. His Norwegian counterpart protests that there was no time and action was necessary. Action was taken and it ended disastrously. "If you want James Bond, go to the library," Burnside replies. Hasty action gets good agents killed as it did in this case. If you want success then do the hard, boring, endless, tedious, and detailed work of preparation. Read maps, study weather patterns, train and train again, learn languages, stockpile equipment that may never be used, argue over budgets to do these tasks, guard against cost-cutting pressures, consider every possible and few impossible alternatives, and then start over. Most of all jealously preserve the capacity to take action from the most insidious and constant threat against the capacity to act and that is the office politics of any large organization, the competition for resources, for recognition, for promotion, for one's ideas, and so on.That brief dialogue sets the theme for most of the rest of the Sandbaggers where the focus is first on securing the Sandbaggers in the dangerous and ruthless world of Whitehall. In Whitehall it makes sense to send assassins economy class on long international flights and expect them to do the killing efficiently and secretly and return economy class. That is far cheaper. One of Burnside's recurrent fights is over budget for exactly such needs as first class travel for the Sandbaggers who do the killing. (There is no point in hiding behind metaphors like "dirty work" or "heavy lifting" because mostly the Sandbaggers kill. If anything less than murder was required, someone else could do it.) Anyone working in an organization knows all of this to be true, and "The Sandbaggers" is on this score one of the most realistic television programs ever made. It is all about budget most of the time.

plnnightsky This is one of those series, you think you know and when you get to the end you realize, you missed something important.This is a series which has many layers, in most cases something is missed and you feel you need to watch it again see how it was missed.This is not a James Bond style series. It is centred around the head of the special ops of the British secret service. On the surface it appears to be about the politics of running a department. Even though it was filmed in the 70's, it holds up well. This is not to say it does not show. This could be a distraction for anybody wanting the slick production of present day.It is well written, the acting does not get in the way of the stories, the characters are believable.I watched the series again recently and it left me wanting more TV of this quality. I highly recommend this series.

noseyq I can't remember how I managed to stumble across this series a good many years ago now, but somehow - and I still haven't been able to work out just how - it managed to hook me almost instantly. There is so much subterfuge, nasty, backroom dealings and internal politics going on and plain intrigue that it hardly matters that there's almost no real action in this series. Virtually everything goes on in the offices of the Sandbagger unit and there's not even very much outdoor camera work, so I suspect this series was made on an incredibly cheap budget, but the scripts are good, the plots are believable, the acting is excellent when you consider that these guys are spies who are not meant to betray too much emotion, and the tension is constant. Good British psychological drama.