Telefon

Don Siegel took over the directing chores from Peter Hyams on this taut cold war action film, based on the novel by Walter Wager. With the cold war between the United States and the Soviet Union thawing, old KGB hard-liner Nicolai Dalchimsky (Donald Pleasence) activates a group of Americans who were ...more

This Cold War thriller has plenty of spy intrigue and action yet is strangely uninvolving. The reason for this problem lies in Telefon's script, which focuses on plot at the expense of characterization: The viewer never gets a chance to understand what drove Dalchimsky to his genocidal mania or why Borzov struggles to avoid any personal involvements in his life. As a result, the film's array of twists and action scenes lack dramatic weight because there is no human element to give them a spark. ...more