The
Central Intelligence Agency has a reputation of failure in
the eyes of many observers. The abortive Bay of Pigs invasion
of 1961 is notable in that regard. Who would imagine that
such a sorry episode would be the subject of comedy? In Company
Man, directors Peter Askin and Douglas McGrath try
mightily to find a way to ridicule the CIA, but end up with
a film that is even more ridiculous. Allen Quimp (played by
Douglas McGrath), an utter fool who is teaching grammar to
high schoolers in Greenwich, Connecticut, during 1959, is
the center of the story. His wife Daisy (played by Sigourney
Weaver) is bored with him, unimpressed with his book on the
threat to Western civilization posed by the decline of the
use of grammatical English, and his relatives agree that he
must shape up. His father-in-law begins to arrange interviews
with various big corporations when Quimp comes up with the
idea that he is secretly a member of the CIA, aka The Company.
His wife broadcasts the "secret" to relatives and friends,
who are indeed impressed that he is a Company man. Rudolph
Petrov, a visiting Russian ballet dancer, presumably Rudolph
Nureyev (played by Ryan Phillippe), also believing that he
is a CIA agent, begs him to arrange a defection. Then a real
CIA agent comes knocking, telling Quimp that it is a crime
to pose as a CIA agent. However, the CIA higher-ups agree
to hire Quimp in order to take credit for the defection of
the Russian and also because he is such a simpleton that nobody
would believe him to work for the CIA -- a perfect cover.
He is sent to Cuba, where the principal operative (played
by Woody Allen) is oblivious of the impending revolution because
he wants a new posting and is not paying attention as pickets
outside his window clearly call for an end to Batista’s rule.
Quimp annoys everyone by correcting their English grammar,
and tries to assist blustering CIA agent Crocker Johnson (played
by John Turturro), who "masterminds" the Bay of Pigs fiasco.
As the film ends, Quimp is sent to an even more obscure posting
-- Vietnam. We presumably are to draw the conclusion from
the film that bungling in Vietnam was due to CIA idiots, but
alas the Vietnam syndrome is still alive and well, not yet
a topic for comedy; for that matter, neither is the Bay of
Pigs disaster. Many lines are indeed hilarious, especially
when Quimp tries to correct the grammar of CIA agent Fry (played
by Denis Leary), whose informative oral briefing is verbally
shredded, sentence by sentence, and thus makes no dent on
Quimp’s dingbat brain. But the plot’s implausibility is excessive.
The comedy deals with subjects that are unfamiliar and thus
of not much interest to most youthful filmviewers, while the
effort to lampoon the CIA falls flat among those who know
what the story purports to be about. MH
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