This South African production, filmed for the most part in Cape Town before that nation was plunged into raw anarchy, offers much for which it may be recommended, including top-flight sound engineering, creative cinematography and able direction, but the script by director Jan Scholtz gradually loses its impact. The work features Terry Norton in her first credited role, and an auspicious performance it surely is, since she is on screen during the majority of the footage as Caroline, wife of a U.S. Assistant Secretary (Ted Leplat) whose diplomatic career is in jeopardy as she is being blackmailed by the KGB, successfully offsetting her every attempt at delivering herself from her imbroglio. Caroline's husband Jack is serving as courier in possession of a computer disc that the U.S.S.R. desperately desires to garner as their possession of it would allow a breach of all American mainframe security caches, and her history of infidelity is employed to force her into obtaining and then delivering the disc to the KGB, while her reluctance to directly involve her husband in the matter plays into the hands of the Soviet intelligence agency. The initial two-thirds of this film are engrossing as the intricate storyline benefits from some good acting, dialogue and camera-work, combining to keep viewers on edge, but Scholtz clearly cannot keep from losing his way so that the conclusive scenes are clichéd and somewhat absurd, undoing what he had achieved. Norton creates her challenging part well and there are good turns also from Andre Jacobs and Patrick Mynhardt as the principal KGB operatives while the sound is faultlessly crafted by Leon Nel; Johan Scheepers and Johan Lategan, respectively, handle their cinematographic and editing responsibilities with polish.
3 Reviews
Bad script, boring execution, falsely marketed
lars-7126522 September 2016
Warning: Spoilers
It's falsely marketed as an action movie in some countries, renamed Code KGB. For a thriller it's not that thrilling. It's a cheap drama with some suspense.
And expect no exotic or exciting places or creative visuals of any kind. The entire movie takes place in the same city, and it's mainly during day time, and it's always sunny.
The script is bad. The motivation for the blackmailing is unknown. It's regarding a computer system that's never explained what it does. Access requires a diskette plus "codes" which turns out to be 16 simple words. These passwords are for an unknown reason changed by Jack Cavanagh so that he's the only one who knows them -- a stupid security risk and totally unrealistic, and does not add anything to the story. The safe where the important diskette is stored is in Jack's home (!), and it's opened using only a key.
Jack's position would not require body guards. But even his wife has body guards. It's just silly.
The bad guys have gathered "evidence" for eight (!) years, to be able to blackmail Caroline. The only reason to blackmail her to begin with is to get her to drug Jack, so the blackmailers can access his safe without him knowing. Why not just break in and steal the diskette? They did not know about the needed passwords at this point!
While breaking in to their house, Caroline has been asked to visit a certain bar. Why? Well, for no reason as it turns out! They could've kept her in a room if they didn't want her to see what they were doing in their house!
The "evidence" is photographs of Jack's wife Caroline speaking to communists; who, why or when is never explained. They still choose to drug and kidnap her and take staged photos of her (unconscious) having sex with an unknown man. She was also raped but this is just something she does not want to tell her husband; she's not too upset about it! Wtf?
At around 3 pm the bad guys sit down and have a chat (!) with Jack and Caroline, and say that they need the codes in two hours (it's not explained why). "Call me at home at 6 pm", Jack says, and they leave. Basically no reaction on that from the kidnappers. Do the math.
And the list goes on! In the cheezy end scene Caroline jumps into the sea, clothes on, swimming to her husband who survived an exploding boat.
I give it 2/10, and that's one point for the fact that there was some suspense, believe it or not, and one point for the cheezy end scene which gave me a laugh.
And expect no exotic or exciting places or creative visuals of any kind. The entire movie takes place in the same city, and it's mainly during day time, and it's always sunny.
The script is bad. The motivation for the blackmailing is unknown. It's regarding a computer system that's never explained what it does. Access requires a diskette plus "codes" which turns out to be 16 simple words. These passwords are for an unknown reason changed by Jack Cavanagh so that he's the only one who knows them -- a stupid security risk and totally unrealistic, and does not add anything to the story. The safe where the important diskette is stored is in Jack's home (!), and it's opened using only a key.
Jack's position would not require body guards. But even his wife has body guards. It's just silly.
The bad guys have gathered "evidence" for eight (!) years, to be able to blackmail Caroline. The only reason to blackmail her to begin with is to get her to drug Jack, so the blackmailers can access his safe without him knowing. Why not just break in and steal the diskette? They did not know about the needed passwords at this point!
While breaking in to their house, Caroline has been asked to visit a certain bar. Why? Well, for no reason as it turns out! They could've kept her in a room if they didn't want her to see what they were doing in their house!
The "evidence" is photographs of Jack's wife Caroline speaking to communists; who, why or when is never explained. They still choose to drug and kidnap her and take staged photos of her (unconscious) having sex with an unknown man. She was also raped but this is just something she does not want to tell her husband; she's not too upset about it! Wtf?
At around 3 pm the bad guys sit down and have a chat (!) with Jack and Caroline, and say that they need the codes in two hours (it's not explained why). "Call me at home at 6 pm", Jack says, and they leave. Basically no reaction on that from the kidnappers. Do the math.
And the list goes on! In the cheezy end scene Caroline jumps into the sea, clothes on, swimming to her husband who survived an exploding boat.
I give it 2/10, and that's one point for the fact that there was some suspense, believe it or not, and one point for the cheezy end scene which gave me a laugh.
Merely okay espionage movie from South Africa
lor_16 April 2023
My review was written in August 1989 after watching the film on Virgin Vision video cassette.
"The Emissary" is an okay political nail-biter, unusual among scores of recent South African-mad features aimed at an international audience by not hiding its locale. Pic is a direct-to-video release Stateside.
Espionage tale concerns the U. S. assistant secretary of state for Africa (Ted LePlat), whom the KGB tries to get under control through his wife Caroline (Terry Norton). Filmmaker Jan Scholtz' screenplay cleverly employs several interesting gambits by which the baddies blackmail her, including drugging her and staging incriminating sex photos as well as exploiting her old flame.
The marital discord between LePlat and Norton adds some dramatic meat to standard spy stuff, though pic never develops the kind of memorable moral ambiguity present in Hitchcock's "Notorious", for example. LePlat is effective in a John Glover-type role, while Norton triumphs over a shaky American accent to make a forceful impression. Robert Vaughn, who's made numerous pics in South Africa in recent years, pops up briefly as the U. S. ambassador.
"The Emissary" is an okay political nail-biter, unusual among scores of recent South African-mad features aimed at an international audience by not hiding its locale. Pic is a direct-to-video release Stateside.
Espionage tale concerns the U. S. assistant secretary of state for Africa (Ted LePlat), whom the KGB tries to get under control through his wife Caroline (Terry Norton). Filmmaker Jan Scholtz' screenplay cleverly employs several interesting gambits by which the baddies blackmail her, including drugging her and staging incriminating sex photos as well as exploiting her old flame.
The marital discord between LePlat and Norton adds some dramatic meat to standard spy stuff, though pic never develops the kind of memorable moral ambiguity present in Hitchcock's "Notorious", for example. LePlat is effective in a John Glover-type role, while Norton triumphs over a shaky American accent to make a forceful impression. Robert Vaughn, who's made numerous pics in South Africa in recent years, pops up briefly as the U. S. ambassador.
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