The Secret Ways

This Cold War drama stars the always watchable Richard Widmark as an American soldier of fortune helping a noted Hungarian intellectual and anti-communist escape from behind the Iron Curtain. The tone wavers between realism and satire, the result of a dispute between Widmark and director Phil Karlson, a B-movie specialist who had just turned down Dr No. "I told Widmark I wanted to do it as a James Bond," said Karlson, "but he hadn't heard of Bond. I said, "If we do this tongue-in-cheek we'll be the first ones.' He said, 'No, I don't want to do it that way.' We had a big fight and I never finished the picture."