“Glasscock, you’re going to Budapest. We’ve arranged flights – you’ll arrive January the eighth.”
“Budapest? I hear it’s lovely in the spring.”
Perestroika and Glasscock is a 1990 limited-release espionage film, written and directed by David Fincher and starring Billy Crudup as Agent Robert Glasscock. Glasscock, nicknamed “The Crystal Pistol” or “The Clear Spear”, is an American secret agent at the tail-end of the Cold War, working to solidify American interests in the republics of the former USSR.
A formative work of Fincher’s, Perestroika and Glasscock introduces the dark and complex themes we come to expect from his later works. Both movingly personal and intensely political, Perestroika and Glasscock presents a complex plot of shifting loyalties, asking the question of what a man is willing to do for his nation, and when the ends justify the means.
The plot takes place primarily in Budapest, shot on location. The beautiful photography – presented by Director of Photography Darius Khondji, who would later work on Se7en and Delicatessen – lingers on the central European architecture as if to illustrate the cold and lonely life of a spy. Glasscock is tasked to make contact with, gain the trust of, and smuggle home nuclear scientist Dmitri Antonov. To do this, he must work with Russian double-agent Vladimir Balakin, who may well be a triple-agent. Complicating matters, Glasscock must smuggle Antonov across the Iron Curtain – but the Iron Curtain itself is in its final weeks as geopolitics move.
Perestroika and Glasscock takes many cues from the James Bond movies, but surprisingly for an American production, it is much more subtle and serious. There’s a sense of humour, as aluded to in the title, yet it remains both wry and dry – rumoured to be Kohndji’s influence on the script. Consider the scene where a man drinks a shot of poisoned vodka. Where Bond would make a line such as “Can’t hold his drink” or “See? Liquor kills”, in Glasscock instead the man opines on how he gave up drinking for the new year, the fatalism of him giving up in only two weeks emblematic of the script. As he takes a drink and keels over, Glasscock says only “Auld Lang Syne”.
There’s none of the high-paced action shoot-outs of Bond – for one, the budget wouldn’t allow it. The plot is far more subtle and interpersonal, the finale coming down to double and triple crosses with a heist style mystery that leaves you guessing until the final scene – but it’s perfect mystery writing, everything was above board, and if you were clever enough, you could have figured out the twist – Glasscock’s secret plan – yourself. Yet the film is also far more cold and brutal than Bond ever was. Consider a scene where an agent confides in Glasscock: “I work for Gorbachev. I work for Bush. Gorbachev tells me to kill, Bush tells me to kill. Neither care for the killing it does to me. Who is the enemy?” We see a true moment of connection in Glasscock’s eyes, before he shoots the agent in cold blood, and again shows his wry humour: “Who indeed? Sleep well, comrade.”
Yet for all its scriptural brilliance, the film remains amateurish. Billy Crudup is far too young to play a character as jaded as Glasscock, and it never quite becomes believable. Likewise, the editing is staccato and poorly paced – Fincher badly needed the help of a better editor, much to the films detriment. The limited release never recouped its investment, and the movie remains forgotten save to Fincher’s greatest fans.
LieQuest