Review by Concrete Playground

A film for those who love Arnold Schwarzenegger but not so much his take on politics, Farewell (or more precisely, L’Affaire Farewell) is a far shot from your typical American blockbuster, delivering both beauty and the brains to go with it.

The matter takes place during the Cold War: a true story of an espionage operation that altered the course of history. Sergei Gregoriev (Emir Kusturica), a disillusioned KGB colonel, decides to sell his soul to the French in an effort to bring change to his beloved Russia. For this ominous task, he chooses not an experienced spy but the humble Pierre Froment (Guillaume Canet), a French engineer living in Moscow with his family.

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Review by Film Ink

Although it feels slightly generic at times, this reasonably entertaining thriller is made all the more intriguing due to the fact that it is inspired by real events.

As stories go, this one seems pretty tall, except that most of it actually happened. In 1981, a single individual passed on to the West a massive amount of crucial information about the identities of Soviet spies and their knowledge of Western research, bringing the eventual collapse of The Soviet Union a tad closer in the process.

That individual was a KGB colonel named Vladimir Vetrov, who is called Gregoriev here, and is played by the renowned film director Emir Kusturica (Time Of The Gypsies, Underground, Black Cat White Cat). The decidedly uncomfortable conduit for the info is a young French engineer called Pierre, who is, coincidentally enough, played by another director, Guillaume Canet (Tell No One). The “relationship” between Gregoriev and Pierre is the cornerstone of the drama, and what we see of their respective private lives feels somewhat tacked on.

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Review by Cinema Autopsy

It is Moscow, 1981, and disillusioned KBG agent Sergei Gregoriev (played by acclaimed Serbian filmmaker Emir Kusturica) starts to smuggle top-secret documents out to the west via a reluctant French engineer named Pierre Froment (Guillaume Canet). Based on actual events Farewell is a decent espionage film that highlights the role played by the French in the Cold War with the growing friendship between Gregoriev and Froment forming the heart of the film. While the Communist regime of the USSR is hardly presented in a flattering light, the Americans are also presented as self-centred manipulators.

The events depicted in Farewell contributed to the eventual fall of the Soviet Bloc but the film never fully impresses the magnitude of these events on to the audience.

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