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Assignment K

1968 British film by Val Guest

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Assignment K (also known as Department K) is a 1968 British spy thriller film directed by Val Guest in Techniscope and starring Stephen Boyd, Camilla Sparv, Michael Redgrave, Leo McKern, Robert Hoffmann and Jeremy Kemp. It was written by Guest, Bill Strutton and Maurice Foster based on the 1964 novel Department K by Hartley Howard.

01Plot

A British spy has his cover blown, leading to the East German Stasi kidnapping his girlfriend to try to extract information about his double agents' activities.

02Cast

03Production

Val Guest said "We shot it all out in Kitzbuhel, great cast: we had my Leo McKern again, and Michael Redgrave who was a very sick man, had terrible difficulties with his lines... Stephen [Boyd] was a wonderful person, a great giggler, a great professional, very nice guy."

04Critical reception

The Monthly Film Bulletin wrote: "Routine spy thriller, unimaginatively scripted and directed. The entirely conventional settings include the inevitable night clubs, expensive hotels and ski slopes (where the travelling matte is much in evidence). Stephen Boyd is bland and wooden as the toy tycoon/spy; Camilla Sparv has little to do but look alluring; and Leo McKern and Michael Redgrave appear fleetingly and to little effect. The plot meanders from dull beginning to dull end with nothing of interest in between."

Leslie Halliwell said: "Dreary espionage thriller, instantly forgettable, and only watchable at odd moments while it's on."

Writing in the Los Angeles Times, critic Charles Champlin commented: "the dialogue is intermittently sophisticated, very intermittently, and the total effect is old chapeau, very old chapeau."

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Sources and credits

This article is adapted from the Wikipedia article Assignment K, written by its contributors and licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Fathomly has changed the layout, removed citation markers, navigation and maintenance notices, and adjusted punctuation. This adapted version is shared under the same license. For references, see the original article.

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