metalero
29th December 2005, 22:04
anyone has seen this great film? It mocks about CIA stupidity in plotting to overthrow Castro. It's a critical satire, I really recommend it.
"..The story follows the unlikely ascent within the C.I.A. of Allen Quimp (Mr. McGrath), the nerdiest, dippiest, most underachieving early- 1960's square ever to don a madras jacket and grumble about the misuse of the English language. Allen couldn't care less about political and social issues. What really gets his goat is the widespread ignorance of the proper use of objective pronouns, especially the misapplication of who and whom.
Conversations with Allen stop in their tracks and turn into impromptu soap-box sermons on proper English usage when he hears a who where there ought to be a whom. In his personal hit parade of intolerable linguistic outrages, the confusion of lay and lie comes in a close second.
Allen's transcendent nerdiness and lack of ambition embarrasses not only his buttoned-down, conservative family but also his nagging wife, Daisy (Ms. Weaver), a snooty socialite who might be described as a walking shopping list of luxury goods he can't afford.
Pressed by Daisy to get a real job (one that pays six figures and ensures ulcers) and desperate to complete his masterwork, "The Grammar Crisis in the English-Speaking World," which he is convinced will change the course of world history, Allen stalls for time by lying to Daisy. He confides that his teaching job is only a cover for his secret employment by the C.I.A.
Impressed and relieved, Daisy immediately spreads the news of Allen's secret identity all over Washington. Few are inclined to believe him, however, until a visiting Soviet ballet dancer, Rudolph Petrov (Ryan Phillippe), whom Allen is instructing in a driver's ed class, impulsively decides to defect and Allen is handed the credit. Hastily inducted into the C.I.A. for real, he is shipped off to Cuba, which the powers-that-be consider a no-account backwater where he can conveniently fade away. But history seems to have insidious ways of following him around.
Cuba's reputation as nowheresville owes to misinformation supplied by the snobbish American ambassador (an uncredited and very funny Woody Allen), who smugly basks in dreams of his former glory days as a diplomat in Paris as the Cuban revolution gathers force literally outside his windows. Later we learn that he consumes daily doses of LSD along with the fine French wine that is his particular obsession.
Once in Cuba, Allen teams up with Agent Johnson (Mr. Turturro), a bloodthirsty, rabid anti-Communist patriot. We also meet Fidel Castro (Anthony LaPaglia) and the deposed dictator Fulgencio Batista (Alan Cumming). Grinning mischievously, Batista, whom the movie portrays as a leering, effeminate dandy, prances around Havana unrecognized in silly disguises that include a twirling paste-on handlebar mustache.
The main body of the story finds Allen and his colleagues improvising and botching one ludicrous scheme after another to embarrass or assassinate Castro. The dirty tricks include an attempted LSD ambush, a box of poisoned cigars and a powerful depilatory that ends up catastrophically applied to the wrong head."
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0177650/
"..The story follows the unlikely ascent within the C.I.A. of Allen Quimp (Mr. McGrath), the nerdiest, dippiest, most underachieving early- 1960's square ever to don a madras jacket and grumble about the misuse of the English language. Allen couldn't care less about political and social issues. What really gets his goat is the widespread ignorance of the proper use of objective pronouns, especially the misapplication of who and whom.
Conversations with Allen stop in their tracks and turn into impromptu soap-box sermons on proper English usage when he hears a who where there ought to be a whom. In his personal hit parade of intolerable linguistic outrages, the confusion of lay and lie comes in a close second.
Allen's transcendent nerdiness and lack of ambition embarrasses not only his buttoned-down, conservative family but also his nagging wife, Daisy (Ms. Weaver), a snooty socialite who might be described as a walking shopping list of luxury goods he can't afford.
Pressed by Daisy to get a real job (one that pays six figures and ensures ulcers) and desperate to complete his masterwork, "The Grammar Crisis in the English-Speaking World," which he is convinced will change the course of world history, Allen stalls for time by lying to Daisy. He confides that his teaching job is only a cover for his secret employment by the C.I.A.
Impressed and relieved, Daisy immediately spreads the news of Allen's secret identity all over Washington. Few are inclined to believe him, however, until a visiting Soviet ballet dancer, Rudolph Petrov (Ryan Phillippe), whom Allen is instructing in a driver's ed class, impulsively decides to defect and Allen is handed the credit. Hastily inducted into the C.I.A. for real, he is shipped off to Cuba, which the powers-that-be consider a no-account backwater where he can conveniently fade away. But history seems to have insidious ways of following him around.
Cuba's reputation as nowheresville owes to misinformation supplied by the snobbish American ambassador (an uncredited and very funny Woody Allen), who smugly basks in dreams of his former glory days as a diplomat in Paris as the Cuban revolution gathers force literally outside his windows. Later we learn that he consumes daily doses of LSD along with the fine French wine that is his particular obsession.
Once in Cuba, Allen teams up with Agent Johnson (Mr. Turturro), a bloodthirsty, rabid anti-Communist patriot. We also meet Fidel Castro (Anthony LaPaglia) and the deposed dictator Fulgencio Batista (Alan Cumming). Grinning mischievously, Batista, whom the movie portrays as a leering, effeminate dandy, prances around Havana unrecognized in silly disguises that include a twirling paste-on handlebar mustache.
The main body of the story finds Allen and his colleagues improvising and botching one ludicrous scheme after another to embarrass or assassinate Castro. The dirty tricks include an attempted LSD ambush, a box of poisoned cigars and a powerful depilatory that ends up catastrophically applied to the wrong head."
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0177650/