Code names, those are, of two young Americans, one an amateur falconer and National Security employee, the other a drug dealer and user, who sell state secrets to the Soviet embassy in Mexico City. John Schlesinger's version of Robert Lindsey's nonfiction best-seller provides adequate information on the how and the where, but inadequate on the why -- why they did it, that is, and what they thought about it. (Oh, well, yes, one of them has an ex-FBI agent for a father, and they get along no better than a lot of sons and fathers, and what of it?) The thinking seems to be that because the story is true, it doesn't really need a point -- or a shape. The emotion of the moment, however, is sometimes vividly conveyed, especially as registered in the increasingly paranoid temperament of the Snowman, a flamboyant and repellent performance by Sean Penn, who is done up in a hairdo and a mustache that call to mind Robert De Niro in The King of Comedy. With Timothy Hutton. (1985) — Duncan Shepherd
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