Code Name: Emerald

Ed Harris is double agent Gus Lang in Code Name: Emerald, from 1985, directed by Jonathan Sanger.

This is another, let's lie to the Axis about where the Allies will land on D-Day and when D-Day will actually happen.

The Germans want an "Overlord," an officer with details of D-Day. The Germans capture one, Wheeler (Eric Stolz), so Gus is sent to Paris to keep tabs on him, and also plant a false story about his health. He has a secret liaison among the German upper crust.

This is an okay film with a fantastic cast: besides Harris and Stolz, Max von Sydow, Helmet Berger, Horst Buchholz, and Patrick Stewart.

The ending is tense, but I felt parts of the film were slow. Worth seeing for the actors.

A double agent is dispatched to try to recover one of the 'Overlords' - the small group of people who knew when and where the Allied invasion would land. Ed Harris was a good choice to play the seeming turncoat. His intensity makes him hard to read while the viewer is jerked back and forth trying to figure out where his loyalties actually lie. Most of the film's running time is taken with the cat and mouse game of Ed trying to manipulate his objective's Nazi captors is pretty interesting, especially when one realizes that he is playing for the highest possible stakes: the success or failure of the biggest undertaking of the entire war. Then, when the action kicks in late in the picture, for once a big chase sequence has a dramatic purpose and isn't just there as a mindless diversion. Ed has to outwit and outrun the whole Nazi war machine in Fortress Europe, or the invasion is doomed.

Everything has a rather old fashioned feel to it, probably since this was just the type of movie that got made over and over in the late 40s and early 50s, but the production looks good and the period detail is convincing. Nothing here felt completely original, but it is a well enough made movie to be entertaining in itself.

The problem of this film, like of many others of the same kind, is, that the further away in time you get from the second world war, the more the plot and the film must be almost painfully discernible as contrived and artificial. Reconstructing reality must be more difficult and appear less convincing the further in time from the reality exhibited you get.

This is a very good story and very intelligent plot, the actors are all superb, especially Ed Harris, here young and fresh with many great roles ahead of him, and Max von Sydow as the honest German officer. Also Horst Bucholz is doing well like all the others, and of course Eric Stoltz as the prisoner. Helmut Berger adds an appropriate portion of nastiness as a very convincing fanatical German Nazi, in some ways he makes the deepest impression in his radiance of constant extreme but well controlled menace, and Cyrielle Clair provides the necessary female bit.

In spite of the obvious artificial construction of the plot and story, it is well worth seeing and rewarding indeed for those in chase of excitement, and for those who love Paris. It is all filmed in Paris and France.

CODE NAME : EMERALD is an intelligent and intriguing World War 2 espionage film, based on the novel "The Emerald illusion", about a double agent (Ed Harris) in Paris in the days before D-Day. The film has many impressive moments of acting and production. The actors are brilliant, especially Ed Harris, he is at his best here, extremely virile, powerful and sensitive, and Horst Buchholz, who was already a veteran actor at this time, is perfectly cast as the deceitfully charming SS general, and Helmut Berger here in a very uncongenial role. Also fine performances by Max von Sydow, Eric Stoltz and Cyrielle Claire.

The lack of action is not a deficiency but an advantage, it contributes to the fact that the character of the film is rather more than less romantic. Particularly striking are the beautiful locations in Paris: Occupied France, Paris in the spring: The portrait of this era is vividly created. I am also deeply impressed by the musical score by John Addison. It adds a melancholic tone to the whole picture and it emphasizes the fact that all this happened a long time ago.

Not a documentary of course but the plot was a bit of a stretch to believe. I did wonder why Ed did't remove his white hat when being followed through Paris as it made him stick out a mile, and as another reviewer has it it was an annoying silly hat, and out of place in 1944. Not a great film by any means but not too bad and worth watching if there's not much better on another TV channel, and finding anything on TV worth watching is becoming increasingly difficult. I've read a few book on WWII spies and double agents and truth is stranger than fiction and it's a wonder how some got away with it for so long. Fortunately the Germans had no successful spies in the UK during WWII with a few of them turned to be double agents.