Second-rate CIA comic revenge caper is more fun than many a better pic. When sly old field agent Walter Matthau is dumped by new boss Ned Beatty, he decides to foul his old bailiwick with a scathing tell-all book. Naturally, neither the USA nor USSR want their dirty laundry exposed so Matthau goes on the run with the help of old gal pal Glenda Jackson. (It's sort of a geriatric BOURNE movie.) Everything is made a bit too easy here; the politic jabs, the jokes, the coincidences; but vet megger Ronald Neame gets his effects not on content, but in letting Matthau & Co. find a breezy comic rhythm which feels witty. The classical score is fun, too. (Mostly Mozart, but listen for an uncredited Montserrat Caballe on Puccini's Un Bel Di.) Too bad Arthur Ibbetson, the runt of that great post WWII generation of Brit lensers, overlights everything.
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