Undercover Chaos

By JAY COCKS

RUSSIAN ROULETTE

Directed by LOU LOMBARDO

Screenplay by TOM ARDIES, STANLEY MANN and ARNOLD MARGOLIN

There is nothing much new in the dirty game of spying, so innovation is not the strongest suit of Russian Roulette. Predictable as it is in plot, however, the movie has an array of disfranchised, quirky characters and an eye for certain dank dead ends of human endeavor that give it a disconcerting, fresh quality.

Director Lou Lombardo, making his first feature, is a former film editor who cut The Wild Bunch and a great many of Robert Altman's movies. Like Altman, he knows how to catch an audience unawares, how to embellish and tantalize. A good example of Lombardo's expeditious, off-angle characterization is his introduction of a character named Henke (Val Avery), who is being sought by various intelligence agencies so that he can be put on ice. Henke, a sour, anonymous-looking man lugging a brown paper bag of groceries and a fresh copy of Playboy, retrieves a rubber ball for a bunch of neighborhood kids. They ask him to give it back, and he looks, for a moment, uncertain. Then he throws the ball through the glass window of a nearby apartment, whose tenant rushes out and starts after the startled kids. Henke laughs all the way home.

Unfortunately, the script of Russian Roulette does not match its vignettes. George Segal, rumpled and deftly exhausted, appears as an intelligence operative named Shaver, suspended from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police for decking a superior officer. Looking for a little freelance work to fill in the time before he goes back to his regular job, Shaver is recruited by a cynical spy named Petapiece (Denholm Elliott), the sort of fellow who sneaks a drag on someone's cigarette if it is left untended for a moment. Petapiece's proposition to Shaver is the elimination of Henke, a notorious political troublemaker who may be plotting to assassinate Premier Aleksei Kosygin during his imminent visit to Toronto.

Henke, however, is abducted before Shaver can get to him. Who has Henke, and Henke's true political allegiance, become matters of increasingly risky perplexity. A hit man (nicely played by Richard Romanus) shows up from Detroit and makes the first of many at tempts on Shaver's life. Before things settle down, the KGB, the CIA and the Mafia all get involved, and all, for their respective reasons, get sore at Shaver. Even his girl friend (Cristina Raines) grows testy. Shaver deals with all the vexations as best he can, with bluff and a little muscle, looking the while as if he just wants to get away on vacation.

Russian Roulette is the sort of slender, dispensable but diverting story that needs many spurious complications to give it heft. The only real surprises it has to offer, though, are directorial grace notes. They indicate that Lombardo is a film maker capable of better things who ought to have the chance to do them.

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