John Huston made many great movies, but I think that he failed more often than he succeeded ("Annie" is the worst, but Huston also killed "Red Badge of Courage" and "Moby Dick" on the screen). "The Kremlin Letter" has a cast of Bergman stars (Bibbi Andersson and Max von Sydow) and an international cast of actors who were good elsewhere (Lila Kedrova is the biggest disappointment to me, but she is joined by Dean Jagger, Ralf Vallone, Orson Welles, et al.) but drained of emotion here or given no character with which to work. Patrick O'Neal lacked the charisma to carry a movie or to make the audience care what happened to him. Richard Boone makes an impression as the bullying mentor, and George Sanders amidst stereotypical homosexual circles, and von Sydow was a master of coldness, but everyone else seems stranded (as in lacking direction!)
The movie has a very complicated plot (or set of plots), an international cast, some kinky sex, lots of brutality, drugs (but no rock'n roll), no visual merits and exceptionally poorly recorded sound for what must have been a big-budget production in the heyday of Cold War spy films. "Beat the Devil" and "The List of Adrian Messenger" are more entertaining Huston movies of international intrigue, but better still are Huston's films of intranational intrigue such as "The Maltese Falcon" and "The Asphalt Jungle."
The movie has a very complicated plot (or set of plots), an international cast, some kinky sex, lots of brutality, drugs (but no rock'n roll), no visual merits and exceptionally poorly recorded sound for what must have been a big-budget production in the heyday of Cold War spy films. "Beat the Devil" and "The List of Adrian Messenger" are more entertaining Huston movies of international intrigue, but better still are Huston's films of intranational intrigue such as "The Maltese Falcon" and "The Asphalt Jungle."