The Falcon and the Snowman

Actress Eileen Ryan died on Sunday just shy of her 95th birthday. She had small roles in lots of movies and TV shows, but is probably better known for being the mother of actor Sean Penn and his two brothers. I had just watched one of Penn's earlier roles, in The Falcon and the Snowman, so now's a perfect time to do a blog post about it.

The star and lead here is not quite Penn, but Timothy Hutton, who has the more important role and of course had already won his Oscar for Ordinary People, before his career plateaued. Hutton plays Christopher Boyce, who at the start of the movie is just quitting the seminary returning to, among other things, his interest in falconry, which is how he gets his nickname. It's the mid-1970s, and Boyce came from a well-to-do family in Southern California where his dad (Pat Hingle) had worked for the FBI. Dad's able to pull some strings and get Chris a job at RTX, one of the many defense contractors that dot southern California.

Before going to work, Christopher meets with his old friend Andrew Daulton Lee (that's Sean Penn). The two had been altar boys together back in the day, but they went in opposite directions. While we've discussed Christopher's life, Daulton used his parents' money to buy drugs, to the point that he's gotten arrested on multiple occasions and has a serious coke habit, hence the handle "Snowman". Probably not the sort of best friend you'd want if you were getting a job at a defense contractor and about to get the sort of security clearance that requires a background check.

Boyce's job involves reading classified cables, and what he reads shocks him. The movie is set in the 1970s -- and based on a true story -- and set in the 1980s when the prevailing belief in Hollywood was that the CIA was evil and involved in overthrowing other governments nilly-willy, as opposed to now when it and the FBI are being used to spy on and destroy evil wrongthinkers like Donald Trump supporters. In the movie, the government about to fall is that of Australian Prime Minister Gough Whitlam (Whitlam did apparently hope to get permanent US bases out of Australia, but the political wrangling that led to his losing his job is from what I read much more complicated, and he did get a shellacking in the general election that immediately followed).

All of these CIA machinations lead Boyce to become disillusioned with government service. However, he doesn't feel he can go to the press like Daniel Ellsberg did with the Pentagon Papers. So he thinks about selling the secrets to whoever might buy them, which in reality means the Soviets or maybe the Communist Chinese. And that's where Daulton comes back in to the picture.

Daulton is in trouble with the law and in quasi-exile in Mexico, so when he hears from Boyce about the secrets, he decides to make a beeline for the Soviet Embassy in Mexico City, meeting Alex (David Suchet), who will be buying the secrets from Daulton and who will more or less be Daulton's handler. It's Alex, knowing only that Daulton is getting the secrets from someone else but not knowing who that someone is, who has Daulton engage in the sort of ridiculous cloak-and-dagger stuff that you see in other spy movies.

Daulton is using his share of the money to fund his drug habit, with the hope of being able to decamp to Costa Rica and build a house for him and his family, Costa Rica being at the time a country that didn't have an extradition treaty with the US. But it's that drug habit which is eventually goin to become the downfall of both Daulton and Boyce. It leads to a split between the two men, with Daulton taking increasing risks as well as trying to blackmail Boyce. But he's really an amateur and has no idea what he's gotten himself into.

The Falcon and the Snowman is, as I said, based on a true story, and that's a good thing, because there's something about the movie that would really defy belief otherwise. But there's a lot to like about this movie. Hutton gives a very good performance as the man who understands he's bitten off more than he can chew but doesn't really know how to get out of it. Penn is also quite good, although his role is written to be obnoxious enough at times that you want to smack him. However, I think I'd have to give acting honors to Suchet as the old hand who can't believe what amateurs he's having to deal with.

It's a shame that The Falcon and the Snowman isn't so well remembered, because it's a darn good film in the spy movie genre. I think that's because of a relative lack of star power, even though Penn would go on to bigger things. But's it's a lot better than stuff like The Kremlin Letter or even The Spy Who Came in From the Cold.