The Beckett Affair

What separates "The Beckett Affair" from many other Eurospy films made in the 1960's is its generally serious-minded, low-key approach. The hero, agent Rod Cooper, is a business-before-pleasure kind of guy, whose job takes him around the globe (France, Switzerland, Nicaragua) but allows him little time for humor and the ladies. And the focus of the film is not on action sequences (there are no more than 2 or 3), but on plot twists and complex, muddy international politics. It's not one of the most exciting films of its genre (a sequence set in a club somewhere in the middle goes on too long), but it's more interesting than you might expect. (**1/2)

PS: I just found out, on IMDb, that the beautiful Krista Nell, who plays one of Cooper's friendly agents, died in 1975 at the age of 29. That just about ruined my day.