Despite a good cast, this WWII espionage miniseries seems as interminable as the war itself.
Months before D-Day, American Army Intelligence Major O'Neill (Gary Cole) arrives in London to help British Intelligence chief Sir Henry Ridley (James Fox) with a plan to fool the Germans into thinking the Allies will land at Calais, not Normandy. O'Neill meets his former lover Catherine (Tara
Fitzgerald), who since the death of her refugee mother has been zealously training to be a spy. Sensing that O'Neill's emotional attachment to Catherine may cause problems, Ridley sends her on a dangerous mission. Working with French Resistance contact LeMaire (Richard Anconina), Catherine rigs
explosives to the huge, harbor-guarding Nazi guns. Back in London, Catherine rebuffs O'Neill's advances. He is drawn into an affair with Lady Sebright (Patsy Kensit), who has been ordered by her uncle, Ridley, to keep O'Neill away from Catherine.
Nazi Stromelburg (Michael York), head of the Axis forces in Paris, learns about the Calais invasion plans through double agent LeMaire. To cement the bogus plan, over the protests of both O'Neill and LeMaire, Ridley sends Catherine back to Calais, where she is captured and tortured for the
"secret" Calais landing plans. Killing LeMaire, who is actually a triple agent working for Ridley, Stromelburg is fooled and pulls the German forces to Calais, and the Normandy landings are successful. When O'Neill confronts Ridley about his cruel sacrifice of Catherine, he is chastised for his
innocence about what it takes to win wars. O'Neill later finds Catherine when the Buchenwald concentration camp is liberated. He tells her that LeMaire loved her, and was not a traitor. The news is too late for Catherine who, now completely dysfunctional, disappears into the stream of
walking-wounded inmates.
Adapted from a best-selling novel by Larry Collins (Is Paris Burning?), FALL FROM GRACE is an expensive international co-production involving France, Italy, and the US. Originally shown as a two-part television miniseries in 1994, it was released on home video in 1995. The film takes forever to
get going and only approaches some entertaining suspense somewhere in its third hour. Veteran director Waris Hussein, who after a few theatrical films has worked mostly on high-profile TV movies and miniseries (DIVORCE HIS, DIVORCE HERS; EDWARD AND MRS. SIMPSON; PRINCESS DAISY), does little to
organize let alone energize this material. Most of his time seems to have been spent tiresomely shifting his characters around international locales for endless shots of them popping in and out of cars, planes, and trains.
The convoluted, talky script by David Ambrose botches the fascinating source events, flattening them under a pallid love story and a predictable theme that wartime espionage is hell. Under the circumstances, much of the secondary cast is quite good, especially veterans James Fox and Michael York.
Unfortunately, the central romantic triumvirate of Gary Cole, Tara Fitzgerald, and Frenchman Richard Anconina (who seems to be speaking English phonetically) is lackluster throughout. As is usual for a miniseries, the period re-creation is as detailed as the drama is not, and the locations are
authentic but underutilized. THE WINDS OF WAR it ain't. (Violence, sexual situations.) leave a comment
