Sabotage Agent

Here’s a rarity: a World War Two propaganda picture that actually doesn’t suck. Like a lot of movies from the first half of the 1940s, this is fun to watch purely as a relic of the time. But it also turns out to have a script, some passable acting, and above all else a twisting, turning plot worthy of a spy movie. Robert Donat stars as a British soldier whose chemistry background and fluency in German and Romanian makes him an ideal candidate to sabotage a Nazi poison gas factory. But after his contact with the local resistance is arrested, he finds himself on his own against the Germans and the naturally-distrustful Czechs. In other words, this actually has a bit of espionage realism to it. Certainly it isn’t as realistic as some of the Cold War pictures a couple of decades later, but for its time and place it’s a genuinely interesting movie. Worth seeing

Genre: Action

Subgenre: Spy

Date reviewed: 12/9/2008