Hellen I like the storyline of this show,it attract me so much

BootDigest Such a frustrating disappointment

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

Nayan Gough A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

eltsr-1 Aleksander Grigoryevich Kopatzky, Angleton's Sasha or Igor Orlov was chased into the Soviet Embassy and emerged with a Wash DC retirement in his own downtown picture frame shop. Angleton found his Sasha, but a greater world of lesser men humiliated "Jim" as the movie additionally depicts showing the electro shock therapy being crudely deliver to Frank Weisner after the Bay of Pigs fiasco. The Company is a Rembrandt painting of The Cold War era that accurately communicates the hard reality that bipolar world was trapped in. The movie could not say what I have said so directly and the real participants are melded and divided depending on what its history might betray or reveal. So forget about any truth you might witness and enjoy the experience. For the CIA participants it was all too real. Michael Keaton is as great an actor as Angleton was a man. Take some time to read Angleton's lying testimony to the Warren Commission: "Within the house of (espionage) are many rooms." "What I said to () after the Bay of Pigs was 'What is your fall back position if you fail?'" Reality what a concept! God Bless them all. and God Bless the United States of America.

Sean Gallagher I haven't read enough of Robert Littell's novels to know if he's the American version of Frederick Forsyth, Graham Greene, or my personal favorite, John le Carre, but I've liked the novels of his I've read, and one day, I hope someone makes a good adaptation of one of them. THE AMATEUR, filmed in 1981, was faithful to the plot of the novel for the most part, but was done in a plodding, mechanical style and further hampered by a one-note performance by John Savage in the lead role; only Christopher Plummer's wry turn as the head of the Czech Secret Service (he also poses as a professor) was worth watching. This made-for-TNT miniseries isn't as bad as THE AMATEUR, but it also falls short of the novel.Littell's novel was an epic roman a clef about the history of the CIA, with the usual blending of factual and fictional characters, and while it traveled well-worn territory (and not quite as substantial in that regard as le Carre's novels are), it's still an entertaining read. Obviously, when filming a long novel, even for a miniseries like this, some things have to go, but it's disappointing when great material is here, and the adapters (director Mikael Solomon and writer Ken Nolan) don't bring it to life on screen.Part of the problem is it seems like a greatest-hits version of the novel. You get the various incidents, like the Hungary uprising in 1956, and the Bay of Pigs, but there's no flow to the story. Solomon and Littell also cut out the humor of the novel - the character of Yevgeny, the Russian agent, for example, has a great fatalism about him (in the book, when asked what one of the principles of Marxism (I think) is, he replies, "A spy in hand is worth two in the bush?"), and Rory Cochrane could have played it as such, yet he does absolutely nothing with the part (he's certainly capable of it, so I'd like to think it's not his fault). Also a lot of the subplots are given to the character of Jack MacAuliffe, and Chris O'Donnell simply isn't equipped to handle them all. Speaking of O'Donnell, another problem is while the scope of the story is for 40 years, none of the characters really age, with the possible exception of Alfred Molina (as Harvey, code-named "The Sorcerer") and Michael Keaton (as real-life deputy director of counter-intelligence James Angleton). O'Donnell just looks like O'Donnell with a gray wig. The only actors who make much of an impression are Molina and Keaton. Overall, "The Company", while not terrible, definitely could have been a lot better.

mpag Michael Keaton's performance is spellbinding, astounding. I couldn't believe what I was watching. When he's on screen, he lifts the piece onto a wholly different level. Unreservedly worth watching for his screen time alone. The unnerving atmosphere he creates happily offsets the unfortunate mawkishness that marrs parts of the Berlin and Budapest stories. Alfred Molina also deserves praise for a strong, gutsy performance as a permanently booze-fueled, no nonsense old time field commander. Production values are pretty high for a television series - Ridley Scott's production presence no doubt helped on that front - and the post-war look and atmosphere of the Berlin sequences is particularly well realised. But this is unmistakably Keaton's tour-de-force.

nestaft I've just watched this series in the UK where we've got it on the BBC for some reason 18 months after it premiered in the US. For lovers of historically based fiction and it how it relates to our modern world it was certainly enjoyable and dramatic in places. I enjoyed some of the acting particularly from Michael Keaton , Rory Cochrane and Tom Hollander. If these 3 men were more photogenic, or we did'nt live in such a superficial world , I 'm sure these fantastic actors would have a lot more exposure than they have had done and bagged a lot more high profile roles , instead of the ludicrously over-hyped likes of Brad Pitt and Leonardo Di Caprio. Also this series gave us a look at some of the espionage machinations and seminal events shaping the Cold War.However it had numerous rather large flaws. Firstly the series insulted the intelligence of the viewer by being too overly pro CIA in viewpoint in places. The CIA were portrayed as basically good guys laying it on the line to defend capitalism, valiantly soldiering on despite betrayal by self serving politicians and shady moles. This overlooks the numerous morally questionable and some might say ultimately self defeating operations and strategies of the CIA during the cold war, which anyone with a reasonably inquisitive mind can find out about. It is of course a good thing that America "won" the cold war, and on balance even with all its flaws , democratic capitalism was and is a superior system to totalitarian communism. However the filmmakers should have trusted the viewers to come to that conclusion themselves without overly trying to force it. The film The Good Sheperd which covers some of the same ground as this series was far more effective in highlighting some of the shady ethical ground America covered in trying to win the Cold warSecondly I think the series was too ambitious in trying to deal with such an important and long period of history in such a small running time. The Mini series should have been longer and this I think would have given us a more nuanced and detailed look at the time in historyit covered. Also some details of the storyline were incredulous and have been mentioned on other posts. Finally I think Chris O'Donnell was a wrong choice to play the main character of the series. His limited acting range lessened the impact of several key dramatic scenes he was involved in . He was just about adequate in the role but there are much better character actors who could have been brought in instead of a past his best film star( nothing personal Chris ) . So in all a decent series , but if you want to learn about the cold war , your best bet remains a wide range of books from your local library or bookshop.