The Falcon and the Snowman

This odd-couple angle is a terrific formula for a movie, creating at least three stories: The plight of each man, their joint effort to accomplish their goal and the changing dynamic of their relationship as the story progresses. As if that weren't enough, The Falcon and the Snowman also turns into a how-to movie with a fine sense of detail for the worlds of espionage and drugs. But towering over all of this--and even over the angry politics of the film--are two special performances by two extremely talented young actors.

A thoughtful, intensely dramatic, superbly acted depiction of one of the most baffling spy stories of recent times. [28 Jan 1985]

Both a spy drama and an intriguing character study. Penn invests his Snowman with fascinating eccentricity and is the more interesting of the pair, though Hutton delivers an estimable performance as the sullen young falconer.

A very curious though effective entertainment, a scathing social satire in the form of an outrageously clumsy spy story told with a completely straight face.

The sumptuousness of Schlesinger's style is impressive. There's something lordly (and a little bored) in this director's command of the medium. While he gives you the felling that he knows what he's doing, he has no staying power--he doesn't develop any of the ideas he tosses in.

By the time their jaw-dropping story is over, you may feel you have traveled every inch of their journey with them, a downward spiral all the way. What you still may not understand is what really made Christopher Boyce (Timothy Hutton) and Andrew Daulton Lee (Sean Penn) do what they did, or, more importantly, what made director John Schlesinger feel their story was worth telling.

Hutton succumbs firstly to a thin role, and secondly to the film's lack of any strong viewpoint about its leading men. As usual Schlesinger is more than half in love with what he might be satirising.