Catch Me a Spy

You wouldn't guess from this film that the writers were amongst the most talented in the UK.Also come to it what is Kirk Douglas doing.Was he that desperate for work.Robert comes across best though it is not much of a contest.Avoid this.

In tubi, it's to catch a spy.. in imdb, catch me a spy. The 1971 film, with kirk douglas, trevor howard, tom courtenay. Andrej smuggles things in other people's luggage to sneak in his contraband. But he keeps getting interrupted. And the people he involves get arrested...for things. And their lives are now goofed up. It's very tongue in cheek! Very subtle. Lots of stereotyped, minority, and jokes about homosexuals. One-liners where no-one reacts. Some chases around the albert hall in england. Cold war shenanigans, lots of brit actors and locations. Then a final big scene a simmering spy ... parody? The music tells us it's a comedy, and there are some funny bits. It's okay. Directed by richard clement. Won a bafta for commitments.

In one scene where French starlet Marlène Jobert plugs her nose for a mousy-sounding voice to thwart cat-and-mouse counterpart Kirk Douglas, it's actually less annoying than her real one...

But she's super cute, probably all that mattered to director Dick Clement in his spy-spoof followup to the spy-spoof OTLEY that starred Tom Courtenay in his penultimate big-screen role until THE DRESSER...

Herein Tom's a bumbling spy trying to follow before befriending Jobert; the latter (whose pop Trevor Howard is vastly underused) on a honeymoon interrupted by her enigmatic husband's arrest, connected to Douglas's vain attempts to retrieve Russian microfilm from the couple's luggage...

And while Kirk's not bad doing lightweight action/comedy, his role should have gone to Courtenay, not only befitting the slapdash pace but with far better chemistry with Jobert, who Douglas seems to be babysitting (as opposed to parenthetically romancing) throughout this semi-entertaining yet entirely-uneven cold war romp.

When the Citadel Film Series book The Films Of Kirk Douglas was first issued, To Catch A Spy had been released in Europe, but not in America. It seems to have had very limited showings on this side of the pond.

The film is a lightweight spoof of the Cold War with Marlene Joubet a French girl married to a British subject trying desperately hard to get her husband back who has been arrested for espionage. Turns out he's made a deal with the Soviets and was deliberately arrested so they could affect a prisoner exchange. When the original exchange doesn't work out due to the most hilarious sequence in the film, Joubet looks to affect her own exchange and settles on Kirk Douglas, a most mysterious Romanian who keeps showing up all the time. She has to because her uncle, a member of Parliament played by Trevor Howard can't seem to close the deal.

Some nice location shooting in several spots in Europe is the best thing this film. The players look truly bored with this project and just phone in the performances.

To Catch A Spy will never make anyone's top 10 list of best Kirk Douglas films.

This terrible little film is clearly among the worst Kirk Douglas ever made. It's not as bad as "Saturn 3"...but what is?!

When the film begins, a couple in honeymooning in Bucharest (???). What they don't realize is that the guy working in the hotel is NOT an employee but a smuggler (Kirk Douglas). Because of his actions, the husband is arrested and his wife (Marlène Jobert) is left wondering what happened. Even though it makes no sense at all, she later ends up handcuffed with the smuggler and then on the run with him...and it's all supposed to be kooky and romantic. Well, to me it just comes off as annoying and nonsensical...and Jobert's voice often grated on me. The smuggler says at one point "...you are such a child"...and her voice does sometimes sound like one. Poorly written, poorly acted and boring.