Review Detail

Now this was a fantastic watch. It's incredible to me that half the material is missing because I only felt lost two times, which is also incredible because this story is relatively complicated. I found it hard to watch knowing that Israel is currently perpetuating a genocide in Palestine at this very moment. Watching this felt like a fictional but all-too-real lead up to the events of today, and Charlie's emotional turmoil is truly difficult to watch. The ending, while abrupt, felt appropriate: nothing gets better for everyone, but today it didn't get worse for most.

The editing is top notch. I didn't notice a single cut or audio issue, and the quality was really great. My two moments where I felt lost were:

(1) 00:02:40. The title "1979" is the year the majority of the movie takes place, except for the intro with Michael Shannon. It took me a while to realize we were never going to return to that intro scene with the German Intelligence member. A small date in the very beginning reading, say, "1983" would be very helpful to ground us in the years.
(2) 01:12:55. when the red car had two keys. They say "two messages, two keys" but I was a bit lost why there were two messages and two keys. In the end it doesn't really matter but it felt strange because a it seemed like a lot of emphasis was put on the key in the exhaust with the peace sign.

Outside of those moments, which were really very slight, I loved every second of it. Fantastic, fantastic cut of a great miniseries. Excellent work! Highly recommended if you're a classic spy lover in the vein of "Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy," "Slow Horses," and even a bit of "Homeland" mixed in.