My wife and I binged The Little Drummer Girl on AMC the past few nights, and much enjoyed it. It's based on master spy novelist (e.g., The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, 1963) John le Carré's 1983 The Little Drummer Girl novel, but since I haven't read it, I won't offer any comparisons. (I haven't seen the 1984 movie, either.)
The mini-series covers the same political, emotional, ethically quandaried terrain as Spielberg's superb 2005 Munich - mining, in particular, the differences in Mossad about what kinds of retaliation are warranted in the aftermaths of the Munich massacre, and in the case of Drummer Girl, in the wake of a Palestinian bomb that kills an outspoken Talmudic scholar and a young girl. At what point does the Mossad team, in its lying and manipulation of those around them, and killing when necessary of terrorists, for the purpose not only of retaliation but prevention of future attacks, become as inhuman as those the Mossad is hunting?
Michael Shannon does a great job as Kurtz, head of the Mossad team, who will do whatever is necessary to stop Khalil, the "genius" (in Kurtz's words) responsible for the bomb that killed the scholar and the girl. Alexander Skarsgård is similarly outstanding as Gadi, a lethally effective and charming agent who has a persistent conscience (he doesn't want to be part of the any retaliation killing). But Florence Pugh steals the show as Charlie, the young actress recruited by Kurtz and Gadi to infiltrate the PLO unit and bring down Khalil. She not only lights up the screen in every scene she's in, but plays her transformations from star-struck ingenue to being almost politically seduced by the terrorists just perfectly.
The Little Drummer Girl is replete with shockers, and will keep you on the edge of your seat until the very end. Highly recommended.
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