DVD Reviews

DVD Review: The Company

By Jeff Swindoll Oct 29, 2007, 14:31 GMT

The TNT miniseries comes to DVD, to be honest I was pretty cold (as in the cold war) on the first episodes, picked up some warmth for the second episode, and have fully warmed up by the third.

The Company tells about some men inside the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and they lovingly called their employer the “Company.” The first episode starts off in 1950’s West Berlin with Harvey “The Sorcerer” Torriti (Alfred Molina) and his apprentice Jack McAuliffe (Chris O’Donnell) trying to smuggle an informant out of the occupied side of Berlin.

Things do not go as planned and the Sorcerer and counter-intelligence specialist James Jesus Angleton (Michael Keaton), aka Mother, begin to suspect that they’ve got a mole in the company. It’s up to both to try and find out who the mole is and each has a different idea at whom the dirty agent is. Jack was recruited into the company right out of Yale and so was his friend Leo Kritzky (Alessandro Nivola). Their college friend Yevgeny Tsipin (Rory Cochrane) is recruited as well, but for his motherland of Russia. This first episode deals with the ferreting out of the mole and is more talk than action. The second episode deals with Jack being caught in a political coup in Hungary and his participation in the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba. This episode ratchets up the action quotient. The third and final episode in the 70s and 80s and deals with them finally catching up with the spy Yevgeny and discovering that there is a spy codename Sasha in the company and the search for the mole. In the beginning, I thought that I’d end up not enjoying this miniseries. Each episode is like a 90-minute film and the first film I thought were decent but nothing particularly exceptional. The film was not unlike the real business of spying – sitting around and waiting for something to happen. Although there is some action, it didn’t seem like there was enough of it. That lack of action was made up for in the second episode as Jack finds himself caught up in two revolutions. The final episode featured a great deal of suspense and mystery and the identity of Sasha was teased around. The performances were uniformly excellent. Alfred Molina is very good as the seemingly burnt out, but still good at the game, spymaster.

At first I didn’t think I liked Michael Keaton’s twitchy performance as James Jesus Angleton (I do love that name though) but they the end he’d won me over with his increasing paranoia and ticks. Chris O’Donnell is as American as apple pie as another Jack besides Bauer who is also in the spy game. I guess the boring bits were somewhat close to reality as not all spying is done in the style of Bond, James Bond. What’s also interesting is the intense planning that went into some of these cold war schemes, many of them taking years of deep cover to come to fruition. Many others are under deep cover for years without being called to action. One of the most amusing is that master plan of a certain character that would’ve truly devastated the United States – too bad he held on to it long enough that it was rendered obsolete (well lucky for us actually). The Company is presented in anamorphic widescreen (1.78:1) and is enhanced for 16x9 televisions. Disc one contains parts one and two of the show and disc two contains part three and the special features. Special features include the 15 minute “Declassified: The Origins of the Company” which interviews co-executive producer David W. Zucker, screenwriter Ken Nolan, executive producers John Calley and Ridley Scott, co-executive producer David A. Rosemont, director Mikael Salomon, Chris O’Donnell, Alessandro Nivola, Alexandra Marla Lara (“Rainbow”), and Alfred Molina and is about how the production came to be. The 23 minute “The Hidden Hand: The Making of the Company” adds interviews with production designer Marek Dobrowolski, Erika Marozsan (“Azalia”), Natascha McElhon (“Elizabet”), Misel Maticevk (“Arpad”), Raoul Bova (“Roberto”), key hair stylist Paul Pattison, key makeup Trevor Proud, and Tom Hollander (“Philby”). There’s also a DVD-ROM gamed called Covert Mission, a 1 minute sneak peek at the Closer, and previews of other Sony DVDs. The Company is a miniseries that I didn’t think I was going to like, but it pulled me into its web and I ended up liking it quite a lot. Thanks to some great performances and thrilling mystery and situations, it ended up being quite good.