Charlie Muffin

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Movie
German title Charlie Muffin
Original title Charlie Muffin
Country of production UK
original language English
Publishing year 1979
length 90 minutes
Age rating FSK 12
Rod
Director Jack Gold
script Keith Waterhouse
production Ted Childs
Norton Knatchbull
music Christopher Gunning
camera Ousama Rawi
cut Keith Palmer
occupation

Charlie Muffin is a timeless spy thriller - albeit set in the Cold War - based on the novel Agent Poker (original title: Charlie Muffin ) by Brian Freemantle from 1979 and directed by Jack Gold .

Charlie Muffin is a British agent at MI6 , but he is an antihero compared to James Bond . He doesn't drive luxury cars, he only has shabby clothes, he is not a womanizer, is a chain smoker, occasional drinker and there is no “action” around him like in James Bond, but he has a strong cleverness.

action

In the run-up to the main plot, Muffin succeeds in smashing a Soviet spy ring in London after he and his colleagues were handed over evidence from liaison officers in East Berlin. He and his colleagues return one after the other to the west of Berlin; he is the only one of them who uses a car, which he spontaneously makes available to a friend to help him escape from the GDR. His friend panics at the border control and is shot, Muffin manages to cross the border on foot.

The Soviet spy ring was run by a General Berenkov, whom Muffin is supposed to visit and interrogate in prison after his verdict. This interrogation is very successful, but this is not immediately visible, as Muffin and Berenkow know each other personally and chat, whereupon his boss, Sir Henry Cuthbertson, demotes him and puts him on leave because he has a personal dislike for Muffin.

Parallel to this act, the head of the KGB appears in public in Moscow for the first time in decades and indicates that he would like to defeat, because pressure is being exerted on him from the Politburo because Berenkov was caught and convicted.

After various failures by the British secret service, in which the American CIA acted as the mastermind, Cuthbertson reactivated Muffin against his will so that he could contact Kalenin and allow him to overflow. Charlie Muffin takes revenge and uses his contacts to betray Cuthbertson to the KGB. In captivity, Kalenin addressed Cuthbertson with a clear word: You treat your best man like dirt and do you expect loyalty? The film ends with the words muffins to his wife: MI6 is rid of its disaster leader.

Staging

The film is a timeless agent thriller that shows the dirty side of the espionage business unvarnished. Compared to a James Bond film, this film is very calm, but its plot is rather realistic and enigmatic.

literature

  • Brian Freemantle : Agent Poker (Original Title: Charlie Muffin ) [and two other novels]. German by Michael K. Georgi. With an afterword by Jochen Schmidt. (New edition.) Ullstein, Frankfurt am Main, Berlin and Vienna 1985, 142 pages (441 pages in total), ISBN 3-548-10351-0

Web links