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100The movie is stunningly intelligent; the concluding passages, in which the game abruptly ends for both men, are frightening and, finally, very moving.
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90As in a Le Carré novel, we're given long doses of the private lives of the protagonists, and we learn their secrets, their insecurities and the toll taken by the necessity of constant lying.
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88That's another thing about Carion's direction: He has an eye for unusual, atmospheric touches -- the kinds of striking little things you notice in the world and think: "Somebody should put that in a movie."
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88This complicated but absorbing tale is not told through primarily American eyes ( Willem Dafoe plays a CIA. figurehead); primarily it's about French and Soviet brinksmanship, and those who succeeded at it, or failed, and one man who died for the risks he took.
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88This is a game of numbers, not personalities, and a shrewd man wants the bigger numbers on his side when historians pick up their pens.
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80Farewell, a cold war drama by the French director Christian Carion, isn't just a movie set in 1981; in many ways it feels like a movie made in 1981.
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80Director Christian Carion (Merry Christmas) establishes a low-key yet threatening atmosphere right from the start, and gets terrific performances from Kusturica and Canet.
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80As both men lie to loved ones to keep their exchange alive, the tension builds and becomes unbearable.
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80It's juicy, fascinating stuff, well orchestrated by Carion and finely thesped -- especially by Kusturica.
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80The source of all this information was a real-life KGB agent, Vladimir Vetrov, code named Farewell, and with the usual adjustments for drama his story gets a respectable retelling in this nervy French production.
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75The movie earns its tension and suspense the old-fashioned way: By making you care about its characters.
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75Carion gets excellent performances from Emir Kusturica as the Russian and Guillaume Canet as the Frenchman. Each is a filmmaker in his own right -- Canet's directorial résumé includes the thriller "Tell No One" and Kusturica's lists the Serbian black comedies "Underground" and "Black Cat, White Cat."
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75More than most espionage movies, the film is about relationships, the men with each other, the men with their own disapproving wives, and governments with each other. Everyone courts someone.
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75When the smoke clears, heady Farewell stands tall among the movies that view the Cold War at close range.
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75Farewell is a solid telling of an obscure story and nothing more. The most effective scenes aren't cloak and dagger stuff but passages like Igor daydreaming of becoming a rock star like his idol Freddie Mercury of Queen.
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70While the film is too convoluted to stir boxoffice excitement, it offers some rewards for sophisticated moviegoers
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70Farewell offers intrigue, simmering tension.
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70When it comes to actual historical details, Farewell crams too many notions into expositional blips of dialogue. And the scenes of conferences in the corridors of power, whether in Moscow, Paris or Washington, are strained and abrupt.
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70Carion might have found a more artful way to dramatize the case's geopolitical impact, but this is still pretty interesting stuff.
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67If taken merely as a vaguely historical spy thriller, Farewell is a dandy tale.
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67As a political thriller, Christian Carion's Farewell is fairly feeble, rendering some of the oldest clichés of Cold War potboilers without much urgency or stylistic flair.
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63It's a bizarre, provocative story and a moving one, but it doesn't access the richer levels and themes of the film the publicity campaign obviously wants you to think of: 2006's "The Lives of Others."
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60Their mundane meetings underscore how easily secrets are leaked, but unfortunately, scenes of meetings between Presidents Reagan (Fred Ward) and Mitterrand seem hollow and naive. Kusturica and Canet are strong, though, as is Willem Dafoe as an American intel officer.
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60It's hard to watch Farewell without thinking of such '70s classics as "All the Presidents Men" and "Network," mature dramas that Hollywood has since all but abandoned (with intermittent exceptions like The Insider).
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60A homely bit of international Cold War cloak-and-dagger, starring badly dressed bureaucrats instead of chic spies, Farewell is based on a vital early-'80s espionage break involving the KGB, DST French intelligence, and the CIA.
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