Smartorhypo Highly Overrated But Still Good

Spoonatects Am i the only one who thinks........Average?

Megamind To all those who have watched it: I hope you enjoyed it as much as I do.

Neive Bellamy Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

filmklassik This is as much a response to samhill5215's review of CONSPIRATOR as it is a review of the film itself. Sam Hill seems to think that paranoia about Soviet infiltration of the West was unjustified, even though around the same time this film was being made (1949) the Rosenbergs were selling nuclear secrets to the Russians and Philby was funneling intel to them from his perch over in England.Sam wonders why Elizabeth Taylor's character -- who the film paints as being naive and apolitical -- would be rattled to discover that she'd married a Soviet spy. I wonder if Sam would be making the same observation if the time line were adjusted to World War II and Taylor had learned her husband was a Nazi.I suppose it matters not to Sam that Mao and Stalin together killed approximately 94 million people. 94. Million.Nine-four, Sam. Million. The number is beyond staggering. It defies belief.Adolph Hitler, one of the most evil humans of the 20th century, was a piker by comparison.But according to Sam, regardless of this kind of unprecedented barbarity, Liz's character was just a Silly Billy to care so much.Unbelievable.The movie itself is okay, but far from great. It's well photographed and professionally acted... the story is intriguing... but it all feels rather insubstantial, as if several important scenes were missing.Perhaps it got butchered in the editing room.Too bad. Like samhill's review.

helsinki027 A teenage American hottie arrives for a visit to the UK and fall in love with a 38-year-old English military man. For some unclear reason he falls for her as well, so they get married.The teen wife, however, soon learns that her perfecto husband is in fact a Soviet spy. How does she learn it? Well, she finds in his pocket a typed letter saying – and I quote almost verbatim – "In view of my success in obtaining secret information for the USSR, I'd like to have a personal interview with the head of Soviet intelligence." I'm not kidding – the letter was not coded in any way, and it had the word "Soviet" printed in plain language. Poor Liz, finding and reading it, literally blanches. Her hubby is a Russian spy! He's a traitor! It's unclear, however, as to why the word "traitor" should have any strong meaning for her – she's not from the UK, but from another country altogether, so she's basically a traitor herself – betraying her motherland on a whim of romance.Ah, traitors… This word features prominently in an earlier scene where a bunch of guys discuss intelligence matters. "They are criminals!" an older dude proclaims angrily. I wonder why such strong emotion concerning treason, seeing as England has not been in a serious defensive war since 1760s. (The only exceptions are Napoleon 1812 and Hitler 1940 – and in both those cases it was Russia who saved the British ass from becoming enslaved by France and Germany.) There were tons of AGGRESSIVE wars of course – but is it appropriate to talk about criminal behavior when your country's been slaughtering innocent folks all over the globe for centuries? Poor Russia in this movie is presented as a Sort-of-Enemy, while America's presented as an ally. Weird considering that Russia never ever fought England nor betrayed it crassly, while the Americans both fought it and betrayed it - by signing the Declaration of Independence.The Founding Fathers of America are doubtless the biggest English traitors ever. Biggest. Traitors. Ever. Because of them, Britain lost millions of miles of fabulous land, trillions of pounds in money, incalculable amounts of mineral resources, and had its military and geopolitical prestige undermined forever. But let bygones be bygones, I guess.In a conversation with friends where both husbands and wife were present, Liz says contemptuously : "My husbands decided to give up his career – he's gonna be a Communist instead." Everybody present thinks it's a joke on her part, of course, but Liz is full of venom. Those terrible commies! It doesn't bother her that she, an 18-year-old girl, is served around the house by a lady in her mid-fifties – she never for a moment questions the justice of it. "No one is, like, forcing her to serve me, right? Let her eat cake or whatever." Yeah, servants are great; commies suck.But on the whole, taking into account the time and historical circumstances when this movie was made, it's a pretty decent picture with a number of effective scenes and a passable performance from ET – something that not all her movies can boast.

theowinthrop Most of the anti-Communist films of the 1940s - 1950s are crap. No doubt about that. Thrown together they had preposterous plots emanating from the Kremlin to sap our national resources or strength. For example one film has Lee Marvin heading a major atomic spy ring outside a missile range from a hamburger/hash stand! The best films of the period dealing with communist threats were the science fiction films like THE THING or THEM wherein the monster was a symbol for the threat to Americans (from an "alien" source). Occasionally a semi-documentary might attract attention, but not much.Oddly enough this early movie was somewhat above average. First it correctly looked at our wartime friend and partner England as a possible source of leakage. This turned out to be somewhat true (but the Rosenberg Case would soon show homegrown spy rings existed as well). Secondly it showed something usually ignored or rendered minor in most of these films. Here it is developed into the issue: who are you going to show greater loyalty to, the Communist Party or your naive spouse?What I really like about CONSPIRATOR is that Robert Taylor plays the central figure - whom American and British audiences were to hiss at. He had tackled a few ambiguous characters before World War II, most notably William Bonney in BILLY THE KID (but that screenplay, like Darryl Zanuck's film of JESSIE JAMES, whitewashed a great deal of the bad out of the central character). But after the war MGM treated Taylor (now a seasoned leading star of theirs) to a wider variety of parts, including more villainous characters. Think of him in the somewhat earlier UNDERCURRENT with Kate Hepburn and Robert Mitchum. Both of these films could not have been made with Taylor in the 1930s.I also sort of enjoy the idea that Taylor, a friendly, but sincere witness for the H.U.A.C subcommittee against Communist infiltration into the movie industry actually did this film. It is his only chance to show what he thought of a Communist agent, and his interpretation (and the screenplay's) show he saw them as naive fools.Also it is the first time in his career that Taylor starred with the only female star of his rank (or higher) with the same last name: Elizabeth Taylor. Just leaving such films as NATIONAL VELVET, LITTLE WOMEN, and LIFE WITH FATHER, she finally came of age here as a young bride. In some ways I have always felt that Ms Taylor's glorious beauty was at a pristine height in films of the early 1950s like this one or FATHER OF THE BRIDE. Here she is in love with her dashing wartime hero husband, whom she gradually realizes is not as heroic (for England) as she thought (though he would disagree - witness his scene telling her about how he has joined one of the great causes of all time!).The film follows their courtship, their marriage, and the discovery of his treason by her. The issue of course is whether or not he will be turned in by her, or will he love her enough to withstand pressure by his Kremlin bosses to (errr)...eradicate his error totally.The film (as mentioned in another recent review) is above average. Taylor does play this English "Col. Redl" (of an earlier war, in a different country - but serving another Russia) as a man torn apart, but refusing to acknowledge his error of judgment. In fact his final decision puts to stop to any type of acknowledgment. The one flaw in this film is similar to the later, wretched ROGUE'S MARCH with Peter Lawford and Leo G. Carroll. The omnipotence of the British Secret Service in ferreting out traitors is shown at the tale-end. I may add that in 1949 that Secret Service (MR5) contained such "patriots" as Burgess, McClean, and Philby. Yeah they really would have been watching Taylor closely!

sol (Some Spoilers) Uninteresting suspense/drama that has all-American heart throb and US government friendly witness Robert Taylor as the British turncoat and sleazy communist spy Maj. Michael Curragh. Who in order to show his loyalty to the great "Cause and Movement" is ordered to murder his gorgeous young wife Melinda, Elizabeth Taylor. Who caught on to his spying and is a threat not only to Michael but to the Communist cell in London that he's a member of. Melinda at first going completely banana's over the handsome and dashing Major Michael after meeting him at a big social gathering in which no man there even bothered to ask her or a dance! they must have been either blind or crazy or both! Michael and Melinda hit it off right away and before you know it their married and living happily after after or so we, or they, thought. Melinda quickly caught on to Michael, and his secret life, but at first she thought that he was cheating with another woman behind her back. When Melinda took some bills from his pocket, to pay for a gift that she bought for him, she found a note going to his handler, Commie London spy chief Radek (Karel Stepanek), about the latest secret military strategy report of the UK & UK. Michaels communist handlers ware already ticked off at Michael for marrying Melinda without telling them about it, as well as not inviting them to the marriage ceremony. Now with her snooping around into his business with them he was given a direct order to do her in once in for all and leave no fingerprints of himself or his involvement with them behind. Michael later tries to shoot and kill Melinda at a duck hunt when he took her to his Aunt Jessica's, Marjorie Fielding, place out in the country but chickened out and just shot over her head. Or was it, like he explained to his bosses, after his hunting dog distracted him only knocking Melinda out. Were told by Michael that his dedication to the communist movement goes back to his days as a youth in Ireland where he fell under the spell of the ideas of Marx & Engles. As well as Michael's dreams of being a part of the greatest social experiment in the history of the world! Yet just one look at the beautiful Melinda showed him just how much BS that great revelation in human evolution, on his part, was. Now Michael got lost in the fog of his own muddled half-baked and self-delusional thoughts.It later turned out that it wasn't necessary for Melinda to turn Michael in to the authorities since the British M15 already knew about his communist activities long before he even met her. All this became moot with Michael seeing himself deserted by Melinda, as well as the local commie spy cell, beat them to the punch with a self-inflicted gun-shot wound to his head. It was hard to believe that Elizabeth Taylor was still in her teens, she was 17 at the time, when she made "Conspirator" back in 1949. She not only was beautiful beyond words but also a far more mature young woman then her age actually indicated.