The Russia House

(1990)

★ 6.1 IMDb · 339 votes

Genres: Drama, Thriller, Romance

Year: 1990

Runtime: 123 мин

Country: United States of America, Soviet Union

Director: Fred Schepisi

Cast: Шон Коннери, Мишель Пфайффер, Рой Шайдер, Джеймс Фокс, Джон Махони, Майкл Кичен, Дж.Т. Уолш, Ken Russell, David Threlfall, Клаус Мария Брандауэр

Plot

Barley Scott Blair, a Lisbon-based editor of Russian literature who unexpectedly begins working for British intelligence, is commissioned to investigate the purposes of Dante, a dissident scientist trapped in the decaying Soviet Union that is crumbling under the new open-minded policies.

Three MI5 officers drag Barley Scott Blair into a Lisbon interrogation room, slapping photographs on a table and demanding to know why Katya Orlova handed a stranger a manuscript full of Soviet nuclear secrets. Barley flies to Moscow, contacts Katya, and pushes to locate the source, a dissident physicist nicknamed Dante. British intelligence equips Barley with a wire and sends him to Leningrad to collect a second notebook. The CIA, terrified the notebooks prove Soviet weakness is a bluff, polygraphs Barley and discovers his loyalty has shifted from London to Katya. On Barley's third trip to Moscow, a phone call Katya receives again changes the trajectory of the story.