Spymaker (1990)

Not Quite a James Bond Movie…

Synopsis: Taking on the KGB and the Gestapo leaves future pulp fiction writer um... shaken *and* stirred.

Blurb From the VHS Jacket: “Torrid love affairs. Elegant and erotic women. Spine-tingling espionage. Exotic locales. Diabolical villains. The man who created James Bond, Ian Fleming (Jason Connery, the son of Sean Connery) actually lived the most exciting spy thriller of all.”

What Did I Learn?: Women with cold lips are no damned good, and shouldn’t be trusted.

You Might Like This Movie If: You enjoy anything with the word “spy” in the title.

Really?: Spymaker: The Secret Life of Ian Fleming is only partly-factual, so I’m not entirely sure how much is fact, and how much is fiction. That said, I have to wonder: 1) did Fleming really get that much pussy as a teenager, and did he honestly seduce not one, but two headmasters’ wives? 2) Why in the world would the Germans place their intelligence archives in a Norwegian castle when good, old Berlin would have been a much more logical location? 3) Leda has an important job with British intelligence – doesn’t she have better things to do with her time than watch Fleming crawl around through the muck during his basic training?

Rating: The acorn didn’t fall far from the tree: Jason Connery does an outstanding job of portraying the man whose books made Connery’s dad a movie star. Spymaker is a low-budget Turner film, so it wisely focuses on story and character development instead of attempting to become yet another Bond film, although there is a cool action scene near the end. While it’s fun to watch for character traits, lines and story sequences that would later get incorporated into the Bond movies, my big complaints would be that it’s difficult to determine which parts of Spymaker are fact or fiction, and the film doesn’t put nearly enough focus on Fleming as a writer, or on his life after the Second World War. 7/10 stars.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0100567/