Operation C.I.A. (1965)

Director: Christian Nyby

Writers: Bill S. Ballinger, Peer J. Oppenheimer

Composer: Paul Dunlap

Starring: Burt Reynolds, Kieu Chinh, Danielle Aubry, Cyril Collick, Bill Catching, Vic Diaz, Marsh Thomson, John Laughinghouse, Frank Estes, Santi, Michael Schwiner, Robert Gulbranson, Janet Russell, John Hoyt

More info: IMDb

Tagline: Our C.I.A. man in Saigon ... The hottest spot on Earth!

Plot: A young CIA agent is assigned to Saigon to stop a planned political assassination.

My rating: 6/10

Will I watch it again?  No.

For a low budget movie like this (purported to be 70k) it looks great.  The Warner Bros. Archive Collection DVD sports a marvelous B&W widescreen print.  And the location shooting in Thailand does the flick a good turn, too.  I rather dig the movie poster (above) although there's too much empty space in the middle on both sides of Burt.  The story is pretty simple but it's not too bad.  It's a low budget Bond film but with one locale, a couple of hot chicks (one local), some bad guys and a plot to kill the American ambassador and other dignitaries with a race against the clock for Mark Andrews (Burt) to save the day.  Although Burt had a lot of acting experience under his belt by this time with lots of TV work, this was his third feature film and his first as the lead.  He's not bad but you can see he needs a few more gigs to hone his craft.  Part of the problem is the mediocre dialogue.  Some of the interior scenes feel more suited for television, especially with Burt's first scene.  You guessed it, the director and one of the writers (Ballinger) worked almost exclusively in TV.  But these folks sure knew how to stretch a dollar.  The best moments are the action scenes, especially the big chase and fight at the end.  Those are quite good...but then I could be remembering them being so much better than the rest of the picture.  There's nothing about this that stands out all that much except for a familiar face or two (like the always fun Vic Diaz) and of course seeing a super young Burt Reynolds in a James Bond kind of role where he gets the chicks, gives the baddies what fer and saves the day in the end...and gets more chicks after that.