Fritz Lang is the director behind this fun wartime thriller, in which US academic Gary Cooper is sent to Switzerland to track down a nuclear scientist who's been coerced into working for the Germans. His goal is to prevent the Germans and the Italians from getting their hands on the methods to build a nuclear bomb, to which end he must work with the Italian resistance and combat many enemies along the way.
This is a lively little picture for the most part, not dissimilar to a Hitchcock film like FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT. It's all propaganda of course, but that's no bad thing when you have an assured hand like Lang at the helm. The main thing that prevents CLOAK AND DAGGER from being a classic is a stodgy and extremely dull romantic sub-plot in which Cooper falls in love with one of his allies. This drags the story down in the second half and it only comes to life again for the climax.
Still, it is a film worth watching, not least for some truly impressive and ahead of their time fight scenes. Lang shoots these fights in a shockingly brutal way for the 1940s, all below the belt hits and attempts to gouge and murder the rival fighter. They're good enough to stand up with the best of modern cinema, so it's just a shame that the rest of the production couldn't match this type of pace and excitement consistently.
This is a lively little picture for the most part, not dissimilar to a Hitchcock film like FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT. It's all propaganda of course, but that's no bad thing when you have an assured hand like Lang at the helm. The main thing that prevents CLOAK AND DAGGER from being a classic is a stodgy and extremely dull romantic sub-plot in which Cooper falls in love with one of his allies. This drags the story down in the second half and it only comes to life again for the climax.
Still, it is a film worth watching, not least for some truly impressive and ahead of their time fight scenes. Lang shoots these fights in a shockingly brutal way for the 1940s, all below the belt hits and attempts to gouge and murder the rival fighter. They're good enough to stand up with the best of modern cinema, so it's just a shame that the rest of the production couldn't match this type of pace and excitement consistently.