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[Short Reviews]

COMPANY MAN

How is history to explain the CIA’s comically inept attempts to knock off Fidel Castro 40 years ago, attempts that culminated in the Bay of Pigs invasion? According to Company Man, the anti-Castro efforts are the brainchild of Allen Quimp (Douglas McGrath), a prep-school grammar teacher whose blundering aid to a defecting Russian dancer gets him recruited by the CIA. The agency sends Quimp to Cuba, believing it a sleepy backwater where he can do little damage. But with the coming of the revolution, the squeamish Quimp concocts a variety of non-lethal ways to embarrass Castro out of power.

Like Dick, 1999’s much cleverer Watergate spoof, Company Man purports to tell the true story behind a historical fiasco — one that’s been suppressed only because it’s too humiliating — by incorporating just enough facts to seem plausible. (The CIA really did try to get rid of Castro with such Quimp-style booby traps as exploding cigars, LSD-spiked drinks, poisoned pens, and depilatory potions to make his beard fall out.) Unfortunately, the second-rate gags and cartoonish characters that co-writers/directors McGrath and Peter Askin have devised here defeat even such pros as Sigourney Weaver, Denis Leary, and Woody Allen. At a brief 81 minutes, the movie still feels sluggish. But behind the clunky slapstick is the worthwhile and still timely point that our intelligence gatherers fear bad publicity more than abject failure.

BY GARY SUSMAN

Issue Date: March 8-15, 2001





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