Eye of the Needle

Sutherland, a Canadian, plays a German who is pretending to be an Englishman, and makes a convincing job of it. At the outset seeming to be an old-fashioned World War II spy thriller, with its steam trains, fog, lacquered advertisements and Bulldog Spirit, this keeps up with the times by also offering a string of sudden 'necessary' murders, a half-severed hand, a ration of naked top-half bed-thrashing, and a hopeless, vicious triangle relationship. The war is ultimately reduced to three people, stranded on a rain-soaked Scottish island. But the drama remains strangely unengaging: we soon realise that the legless (in both senses) ex-Spitfire pilot is going to have to go, and though the hysterical, bullet-ridden climax is impressive, we know that there can be only one survivor. On an afternoon as wet as those on the island, the film would pass the time agreeably, nothing more.