Jack Strong – the name is only heard once in this movie of the same name. It’s the code name of Ryszard Kukliński, a real-life colonel in the Polish army who worked as a spy for the CIA in the period running up to the fall of the Iron Curtain and the end of communism.
Much of the advertising for this film, which came out in 2014, centres on Patrick Wilson, who is barely in it, and also Dagmara Domińczyck (now a lot more famous on account of Succession). The two of them are married and so presumably came as a package, Polish-born Polish-speaking Domińczyck having suggested Wilson, I’m guessing. Fine though they are as a pair of CIA operatives, if it’s them you’re here for, I wouldn’t bother. They are here to get a few producers’ wallets open but contribute very little to the story.
Which is fine. This is about Kukliński pure and simple, or more to the point what persuaded a loyal believer in the regime to become a secret fighter against it, and at the highest level. Though it’s never explicitly stated in this retelling of events, at his peak Kukliński was a speech writer for General Jaruzelski, the leader of the country in the dog days of the Communist era.
And the answer to the loyalty/treachery question is… patriotism. As the film opens, young idealistic Kukliński is involved, at a distance, with the crushing of the Prague Spring in Czechoslovakia in 1968, when the Soviet tanks rolled in and wiped out the country’s experiment in lo-fi democracy. Shaken by what he he has seen, Kukliński stews on the knowledge for a while before eventually offering himself up to the CIA as a spy. He knows that what he’s doing will be treated as treason by his government but rationalises that he’s acting for the good of his country. What happened in Prague in 1968 can happen in Poland too. And Kukliński knows this is the case because he’s the man who’s been charged with drawing up the plans for dealing with the Solidarity trade union if its agitating in the shipyards of Gdansk becomes something more widespread (which it eventually did).
The story is told in traditional flashback as the captured, older Kukliński is debriefed, with all the various stages of his progress from naive idealist to seasoned agent worked though in methodical, downbeat fashion. This is a story of old school spycraft – meetings on dark corners, chalk marks on walls and so on – run alongside the twin tracks of Kukliński’s rise through the ranks at work and his domestic life as a loving dad and husband.
It is clearly shot for Polish consumption. References are made which, to the outsider, don’t mean an awful lot. The scenes shot in English have that weird quality that you get in foreign-language movies when they suddenly switch into the familiar – as if the actors and their lines had both been run through Google Translate. Here they are, the generals, the CIA big noises and politicians, familiar and yet oddly off.
As for the rest of it, writer/director Wladyslaw Pasikowski has decided that matter of fact is the way to go. Once Kukliński makes his decision to work for the other side, logic takes him where it has to go. Marcin Dorocinski plays Kukliński in a similar vein, as the unassuming spy who never really wanted the job, would rather be at home with his wife, the dog and the kids than taking pictures of top secret documents with his camera disguised as a cigarette lighter.
It is deliberately drab, matching the concrete building and brown/beige interiors of the regime, though the drabness spills over a touch into the telling of the story, which could do with being a bit more thrilling – that car chase on severely iced-up roads comes as a real relief.
You could also argue with the geopolitics (simplistic) and the emotional gear changes (lacking) but Pasikowski and crew are here to tell the story of their country at a key moment in its history, and to detail the debates raging within it at the highest level. Was Kukliński a traitor? If the state isn’t the highest expression of a nation’s existence, what is? Can you betray your country with the aim of saving its soul?
Jack Strong – Watch it/buy it at Amazon
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© Steve Morrissey 2024
