The Operative ปฏิบัติการจารชนเจาะเตหะราน (2019) [พากย์ไทย บรรยายไทย]

Some spy thrillers are as scrupulously functional as their protagonists. “The Operative,” directed by Yuval Adler, doesn’t offer much distinctive, but it does deliver a few suspenseful sequences, some interesting nuts-and-bolts details of espionage work and a good lead performance en route to an unsatisfying ending.

The intrigue begins when Thomas (Martin Freeman), who worked for the Mossad, receives an unexpected call from Rachel (Diane Kruger), a former operative he used to handle. What she is up to and why the Mossad trusted her — her international upbringing and loose ties to Israel made her a valuable asset, even as they threw her loyalties into question — come under the microscope.




 

Flashbacks reveal how Thomas developed a rapport with Rachel, who was sent to Tehran with a day job as an English teacher. The best scenes chart Rachel’s growing comfort with being a spy. She is confronted with one potential opportunity for blown cover after another and always retains her composure — which means that Kruger’s performance, as much as Rachel’s, is crucial to the movie’s effectiveness. But Rachel doesn’t always stick to the script. For starters, she falls for Farhad (Cas Anvar), who runs the company she is supposed to infiltrate.

A serviceable but not stylish filmmaker, Adler shoots office spaces and restaurants in a blandly shadowy style redolent of peak TV. The momentum keeps up, though, until the homestretch recasts the proceedings as a character study, a choice that mostly plays like an excuse to avoid resolving the plot.