Operation CIA is an early film role for Burt Reynolds. We see a clean shaven Reynolds playing a young CIA agent dispatched as an university agriculture professor who is assigned to Saigon to stop a planned political assassination at the US Embassy.
Reynolds went on to become a top box office star in the 1970s mainly for light action comedies but his reputation as an actor is rather maligned. Directors such as John Boorman who worked with him in Deliverance have noted that Reynolds is a good and clever actor, always thinking how to make his performance better.
The film has extensive location shooting. The problem is, as my son exclaimed, 'Dad, dad, we've been there, its Bangkok!' Right from the beginning we see the iconic Wat Arun and then we see the Grand Palace. It certainly is not Saigon. Maybe in those days viewers will not have noticed as people were less extensively travelled.
The film has a routine if silly plot but there are a lot of nasty deaths. People throwing bombs even at a group of children, people walking off a motorbike which is primed to go off. There is a grinning villain almost akin to Frank Gorshin's The Ridder.
Its a B film, although I am sure the filmmakers had a great time in Bangkok. Reynolds shows sign of promise, he gets a love interest, we even see him wisecracking. A spy with his heart in the right place.
