Cloak and Dagger

Starring:Gary Cooper, Lilli Palmer, Robert Alda, Vladimir Sokoloff, J. Edward Bromberg, Marjorie Hoshelle, Ludwig StÃ¶ssel, Helen Thimig, Dan Seymour, Marc Lawrence, James Flavin, Patrick O'Moore, Charles Marsh, Holmes Herbert, Ross Ford, Otto Reichow, Lynne Lyons, Vernon Downing, Douglas Walton, Bobby Santon
Director: Fritz Lang
Studio: Republic Pictures
Product Type: DVD

Amazon.com

Who should a kid's hero be? In this underrated adventure-comedy, that's the central issue. Henry Thomas, fresh from E.T., plays a San Antonio kid whose father (Dabney Coleman) doesn't spend nearly enough time with him. So the boy loses himself in video games--and even has an imaginary friend (also played by Coleman), a super-resourceful secret agent. When he accidentally comes into possession of a spy group's secret plans, and winds up on the run from them, he must learn to rely on himself (and his imaginary pal) to save his skin. But, in the end, Dad proves to be his real hero in this engaging and solid family film. --Marshall Fine

Product Description

Davey Osborne is an imaginative youngster who loves role-playing games, and who often enlists the aid of his best friend, an imaginary super-spy named Jack Flack. One day he witnesses a real murder of an FBI agent who passes a videogame called "Cloak & Dagger" to him before he dies. When the police come, the body is gone, and no one will believe him, including his father, Col. Hal Osborne. Soon Davey finds himself up to his neck in hairbreadth escapes, real bullets, and slam-bang action as the hitmen close in. Can Jack save him before time runs out? Cloak & Dagger stars Henry Thomas of E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial, Dabney Coleman in a dual role of Jack and Davey's father, and Michael Murphy.

System Requirements:

Running Time 102 Min

Format: DVD MOVIE

Customer Reviews:

Oldie But Goodie.......2007-07-02

My child really liked this movie. Action packed older movie that made the movies great back then.

f---ing awesome adventure.......2007-06-19

if u like adventures ...... get - this - movie.

wonderful childhood movie.......2007-05-12

I loved this movie when it was released to video and television. As a fan of the old game, I wanted to see this. I'm just glad its available on DVD so I can share it with my kids instead of the newer movies.

Excellent!.......2007-02-03

Watching this movie was just as enjoyable as an adult as it was when I was a kid - any my 9- and 7-year-old boys enjoyed it, too!!

Cloak & Dagger DVD.......2007-01-30

I order this for my sister as Christmas present. I was really suprised with the speed of the delivery. My sister shared the dvd with a friend, and she absolutely loved it. This movie is great for all ages, my sister is 45 and has loved this movie since was first released. Her friend is in her 70's and she also love it. I will definately order more Dvd's from Amazon.

Average customer rating:

A Now-And-Then Interesting Fritz Lang Film, But Not A Very Successful One
This is a race. It's the Germans or us.
Early Bond precursor
A Lesser Lang
The parts are greater than the whole.

Cloak and Dagger
Starring: Gary Cooper , Lilli Palmer , Robert Alda , Vladimir Sokoloff , and J. Edward Bromberg
Director: Fritz Lang
Manufacturer: Republic Pictures
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

General | Drama | Genres | DVD | Video

Classics | Drama | Genres | DVD | Video

Suspense | Mystery & Suspense | Genres | DVD | Video

Mystery | Mystery & Suspense | Genres | DVD | Video

Classics | Mystery & Suspense | Genres | DVD | Video

General | Mystery & Suspense | Genres | DVD | Video

Drama | Kids & Family | Genres | DVD | Video

Espionage | Action & Adventure | Genres | DVD | Video

World War II | Military & War | Genres | DVD | Video

DVDs Under $7.49 | Today's Deals in DVD | Special Features | DVD | Video

( C ) | Titles | Features | DVD | Video
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ASIN: B00008RV0H
Release Date: 2003-05-20

Amazon.com

Cloak and Dagger will go down in history as one of the first post-war, atomic power, spy thrillers. Gary Cooper is physics professor Alvah Jesper, sent to Europe on a secret mission to uncover the Nazis' atomic bomb program. The elements are all there for success: the legendary director Fritz Lang, Gary Cooper, World War II, spyies, murder, romance, the beautiful Lilli Palmer, and the danger of atomic power in the hands of the Nazis. But somehow it all falls a little flat. Cloak and Dagger is still worth checking out for fans of post-war espionage films and cinephiles interested in the historical pairing of Lang and Cooper. Unfortunately, most will find the film dated and should seek to satisfy their post-war cravings with Carol Reed's The Third Man --Rob Bracco

Description

From legendary director Fritz Lang comes an engrossing spy thriller years ahead of its time. Gary Cooper is an American scientist, parachuted into war-torn Nazi Germany to obtain military secrets. But the deeper he probes, the deadlier his mission becomes...especially when his involvement with mysterious Lilli Palmer catapults him into an intense maelstrom of danger, betrayal and murder.

Customer Reviews:

A Now-And-Then Interesting Fritz Lang Film, But Not A Very Successful One.......2006-04-13

Let's get the bad news out of the way first. And please note that some elements of the plot are discussed. Fritz Lang while in Hollywood made some movies of such variable quality that, for me, it's hard to get a fix on just how good he was, particularly considering the quality and originality of his German films. Cloak and Dagger is not exactly a failure, but it sets up such an unrealistic premise that the movie itself seems not much more than a left-handed exercise by a right-handed man. For instance, Gary Cooper's character, Professor Alvah Jesper, a physicist at Midwestern University, is recruited by the Office of Strategic Services to go to Switzerland. We meet Jesper in his lab working on an experiment...in a well-cut suit, the coat buttoned and wearing a perfectly knotted tie. With apparently no time for training, we meet him again two days later in Switzerland up to his neck in German spies. Substantial stretches of the movie, particularly in the middle, just seem to dawdle along. While the film features an A list star with Cooper, some of the secondary players don't add much interest. And Cooper, 45 when he made the movie, already had that haggard look around his eyes. He could easily have been 55. It doesn't help that the film's female lead, Lilli Palmer, who was 32, could easily pass for 22.

Still, the movie has some high points. The espionage maneuvering in Switzerland played out in an elegant hotel and a mountain lodge is clever and, in the lodge, violent. Jesper's insertion into Italy from a submarine at night and in wet weather builds tension, as does his meeting with Italian partisans and their trip to Rome, hidden in a truck, through checkpoints. The violent confrontation at a country farmhouse between an aging Italian physicist and his daughter is unexpected. And one hands-on fight to the death between Jesper and a tough Italian undercover cop played by Marc Lawrence in a building entrance next to a restaurant, with street musicians playing and singing, is silent and brutal.

The basic story line goes like this. The OSS knows the Germans are working to build an atom bomb but they don't know how far along the project is. A Hungarian scientist, a brilliant mathematician, has escaped from Germany over the Alps to Switzerland. Jesper, a physicist working on the American bomb, is recruited to go to Switzerland and interview the woman. He speaks German and the two know each other. As things would have it, Jesper determines he must go on to Italy to try to talk an Italian scientist into escaping to America. He meets with a number of Italian partisans who help him, including Gina (Lilli Palmer in her first Hollywood movie), and the partisans' leader, Pinkie (Robert Alda). Tentatively, while Jesper and Gina are hiding out together in Rome, a relationship develops. The end of the movie, after partisans hold off the Germans to allow Jesper and the scientist to escape, sees Jesper pledging to return for Gina after the war, and Gina, eyes misting, watches his plane fly off.

If you're a Lang completist or just enjoy WWII espionage movies, this might be something to add to your collection. The DVD picture is just fine. There are no extras.

This is a race. It's the Germans or us. .......2005-07-27

As the title suggests, CLOAK AND DAGGER (1946) is a spy movie that fictionally depicts the exploits of the OSS (Office of Strategic Services), the intelligence arm of the US Army and the precursor of CIA. In this movie director Fritz Lang makes of Gary Cooper a physicist and sends him to Switzerland to find and bring home a foreign scientist who's working on the atom bomb. When that scientist is killed by enemy agents Cooper goes to Italy to extract yet another scientist whose sympathies are with the Allied cause.

There's are some fantastic elements to CLOAK AND DAGGER that made it hard for me to warm up to this movie. Cooper (as Prof. Alvah Jasper) is, we're told, working on the Manhattan Project when the OSS chief picks him because `he'll know what to look for', whatever that means. Maybe it means he can tell the difference between pitchblende and heavy water. You'd think whoever was working on the Manhattan Project was a lot more valuable in the lab than in the field, especially when about all he does, spy-wise, is conduct a friendly kidnapping. Heck, Richard Conte or even John Ireland could do that for you, and at half the price - not that Conte or Ireland are in this one, but this movie doesn't need or add to the luster of a star of Cooper's stature. According to a biography of Lang, CLOAK AND DAGGER was intended to be Lang's warning against atomic research. That would explain why Lang has Prof. Jasper go on and on about the power contained in an apple - why, there's enough energy locked in an apple to blow up this campus! This city, even! C&D was supposed to end with an impassioned anti-atom speech by Jasper which, according to the Lang biography, was filmed and subsequently cut out and destroyed by the releasing company. While in Italian Jasper meets and becomes the charge of pretty young resistance fighter Gina (Lilli Palmer.) Gina might have been able to resist the charms of a Conte or an Ireland, but you don't mix a pretty young with a superstar like Gary Cooper, leave them alone and not expect sparks to fly, embers to glow and flames to erupt. The romantic subplot more or less hijacks half the movie and all the good stuff in the movie happens when Cooper and Palmer are alone. They get the best scenes, including a charming night in a safe house with a forlorn kitten yowling outside the door.

The problem - problems, really - stem from the limp action. Lang handles the foreign agent paranoia stuff well enough. Things ain't what they seem. Carelessly tossed matchboxes or a brace of nuns collecting for the poor can be deadly menaces. There are a couple of well choreographed fight scenes, but the danger never becomes imminent enough and the romance never quite believable enough to work. I think Lang was trying for a lump in the throat when Gina and Jasper share a `We'll always have Paris' scene. That scene leaves one a bit cold, and, as usually happens when such things fail, you resent the director for so blatantly trying to manipulate your emotions. It's probably for the best that the studio loped off the anti-atom ending. One misfire ending is enough for any movie. This one didn't need two of them.

CLOAK AND DAGGER is an okay movie, probably best suited for fans of Gary Cooper or Fritz Lang. I don't know if there are a lot of Lilli Palmer fans out there, but she's the best thing in this one. I'm a big fan of Lang's and I'm slowly completing my collection of his available titles. Lang's deliberate approach to storytelling doesn't bother me much, but this one was a little too slow and diffused even for me. The print is in good condition, the disk contains no extra features.

Early Bond precursor.......2003-09-15

Although eventually slowed down by the romantic subplot, this starkly lit, violent spy movie makes Gary Cooper into a quasi James Bond during its first half. Cooper plays a physicist recruited by the OSS to interview an escaped Nazi scientist in Switzerland. Bond fans will recognize a scene in the Swiss airport that was used nearly shot-for-shot in Dr. No many years later. Cooper seduces a beautiful German spy and in one bar sequence orders, of course, a very dry martini. The movie slows down a bit after he is smuggled into Italy, meeting Lili Palmer (in her first major role), but the occasional presence of Alan Alda's dad Robert, in a rare major role, livens things up, as does the confrontation between Cooper and Marc Lawrence. There is also a terrific gun battle at the end.

The most interesting things about this movie are the two violent fist-fight sequences - wonderfully staged and exceptionally violent for that era - and the paranoid atmosphere of constant danger. As mentioned by others, however, the ending looks way too much like Casablanca.

It is a little weird how Cooper goes from mild-mannered scientist to dashing playboy to martial arts expert all in the space of about two weeks (including cross-Atlantic travel), but, hey ya never know. Great Max Steiner score (which is sort of redundant).

A Lesser Lang.......2001-10-23

Despite a fine cast and first-rate Warner Bros. production values, "Cloak and Dagger" (1946) remains one of director Fritz Lang's lesser efforts. Set during the final months of World War II, this espionage thriller begins promisingly with Gary Cooper as an American physicist sent on a mission to rescue a scientist from his Nazi captors, who have succeeded in developing an atomic bomb. Unfortunately, this intriguing premise runs out of steam at the halfway mark -- weakened by a lengthy romantic subplot. "Cloak and Dagger" would have been more effective if the studio had retained Lang's original ending in which Cooper's character discovers the abandoned location where the Nazis made their atomic bombs. Instead, the film is saddled with a predictable, "Casablanca"-inspired finale. Though "Cloak and Dagger" inevitably falls flat, there are some memorable sequences in the classic Lang tradition.

The parts are greater than the whole........2001-08-03

Fritz Lang was one of the world's directing treasures, yet too few people know his name. With credits such as M, Metropolis, The Woman in the Window and The Big Heat (as well as many brilliant lesser-known, often German-language films), he helped to *invent* many genre conventions that are now cliches. He is also one of two filmmakers who really influenced Hitchcock in concrete ways (Val Lewton being the other).

In many ways Cloak and Dagger is ahead of its time, and in others it is disappointingly dated. It offers several great scenes but loses its way several times as well. It starts out with some overly pretentious scenes as American nuclear scientist Gary Cooper is approached to help the Allies rescue a brilliant scientist held behind enemy lines. Then there are a couple of nice fights and some good direction and rising suspense as the mission gets underway. Then, it becomes a story of Gary Cooper meeting and falling in love with Lilli Palmer, a devoted but despondent member of the Italian underground fighting in WW2. But this is not really the story that the early portions had been building up to, so while the middle section is not bad, it is slower and seems out-of-place. Then when we return to the action of the Allied team rescuing a scientist held by fascists (none of which we see, hurting the film a lot), the impressive final shootout lacks the impact it should have had. And the movie takes a quick, easy way out of the situation, nullifying much of the suspense that had again been achieved and leaving a sour taste.

So despite all its small triumphs, Cloak and Dagger has to be classified a near- miss.

P.S. The best scene involves a struggle between Cooper and someone who has found him out. He has to keep the man from shouting for help to the policeman right outside. And then a little girl's ball bounces down the steps toward them, and she runs to retrieve it. How will our hero get out of this quickly and quietly enough to neither alert the cop nor make the girl scream...? It's admittedly great, edge-of-your- seat stuff, to rival any one scene in Hitch's canon.

Product Description

Cloak & Dagger and The Little Vampire - 2 Seperate DVDs- Kids Action & Adventure Set DVD 1. Cloak & Dagger:Kids Action & Adventure: Davey Osbourne is an imaginative youngster who loves role-playing games, and who often enlists the help of his best friend, an imaginary super-spy named Jack Flack. One day he witnesses a real murder of an F.B.I.(Federal Bureau of Investigation) agent who passes a videogame called "Cloak & Dagger" to him before he dies. When the police come, the body is gone, and no one will believe him, including his father, Coronel Hal Osbourne. Soon Davey finds himself up to his neck in hairbreath escapes, real bullets, and slam-bang action as the hitmen close in. Can Jack save him before time runs out? STARS: Henry Thomas(E.T. The Extra Terrestrial) as Davey Osbourne , Dabney Coleman (9 to 5), a as both Jack Flack & Davey's Father, & Michael Murphy. Widescreen, Audio: English Dolby 2.0, Color, 102 minutes, Universal Studios, Rated PG. DVD 2. The Little Vampire: Kids Action & Adventure: For Tony Thompson (Jonathan Lipnicki - Stuart Little , Jerry Maguire), third grade really bites. He's in a new school, in a new country, and he's having trouble fitting in. But things change when Tony befriends a young vampire and goes on fang-tastic flying adventures, eluding vampire hunters and driving the countryside of Scotland batty. Written by Larry Wilson (The Addams Family, Beetlejuice) and Karen Kirkpatrick (Chicken Run, James and the Giant Peach), The Little Vampire is a comedy that the whole family can sink their teeth into! 94 minutes, Audio: English Dolby 5.1 or 2.0, Widescreen & Full Screen versions,Rated PG, Universal Studios,FUN FEATURES: 3 Interactive Kid-Friendly Games, Hilarious Vampire & Monster Jokes, Easy to make Recipes for Spooky Snacks, DVD-ROM Contents: Original Theatrical Website, Ability to jump from the Script to the Scene in the Movie, Cool Flying Vampire Cow Screensaver!

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