The real puzzle about ["The Mackintosh Man"] is the fact that such a rock-hard, witty director wanted to make it. It has very little humor, apart from quixotries of speech habits; no drive of intellect; some dazed factual mistakes about England; and a lot of holes in the plot. It doesn't work as a parody of spy thrillers, or as a spy thriller in itself, or as the sort of sly joke that "The List of Adrian Messenger" was. Sometimes it has Huston's gaunt comprehension of heroism, but the mediocre Maurice Jarre music is a general measure of the film. Huston, of all directors, usually possesses force, but this movie is flabby. It has echo-chamber moments, like the telling of some story remembered from a long time ago, which is often a majestic thing, but not in thriller plots. Though there are interludes of sexual sophistication in the...