To me, this movie is perfection.

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

Easily the biggest piece of Right wing non sense propaganda I ever saw.

A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

I have just watched this movie for the first time and have to say it will also be my last. Please let this poor old movie rest in peace, and for heaven's sake don't encourage anyone else to watch it. Made in a time when TV was a youngster, the glamorous cinema tradition of spy vs spy was a sub genre the public must have craved. But today things have moved on... a classic? never. The interminable time it took to dial a telephone number, or to put a key in a lock, all in a fabulous Cinemascope closeup, is just plain boring now. Film noir this is not.We have seen it all before, and done much better than this laughable piece of sad memorabilia from the Sixties.I would have laughed a lot more if it hadn't have been for the acting chops of the great Gordon Jackson, but even so my chuckling and head shaking hurt, because I really expected the film to be better.Where do reviewers see the "hip" and "cool" in this movie, when all I see are hackneyed themes and melodramatic silences. I just do not want to watch an actor grind coffee beans and make a coffee in real time.Goodbye Ipcress File, I'll leave out the Do Not Disturb sign to warn the others!

***SPOILERS*** Known as the thinking man's "James Bond" movie has the just released from the brig for stealing booze out of the local army PX former UK Army Sgt. Harry Palmer, Michael Caine, who's recruited by his boss Colonel Ross, Guy Doleman,to find out what's been happening to a number of NATO scientists. It's these brilliant men who suddenly lost their memories as well as minds taking what ever information that they had in scientific as well as military research down the memory hole together with them.Palmer a master cook, he learned that wile doing KP in the British Army, and food & wine expert is told by his bosses in British intelligence to go undercover and find out what happened to the scientists in there suddenly losing their minds. That's in order to keep Plamer's handlers' hands from getting dirty or being , like Palmer, exposed and possibly assented. Palmer does crack the case he's on by deciphering this so-called "Ipcress File" that involves brainwashing the top western scientists and making them useless in their ability to think straight. Palmer himself is later kidnapped and tortured by the master mind of this weird operation communist Albanian Eric Ashly Grantby-Code name "Bluejay"-who uses torture to make Palmer forget who he is and who he's working for. "Bluejay" is planning to turn him into a helpless zombie as well as mind controlled assassin for, I suppose, the Soviet Union's KGB.***SPOILERS***Dark and stark looking film with a minimum of light-even in total daylight-"The Ipcress File" was soon to become the standard intelligent spy film that all others following it are to be compared to. It shows just how dangerous the spy game really is unlike the many "James Bond" real or imitated movies where in it our hero Harry Plamer is just a regular guy or just plain Joe not a superman without all kinds of gadgets to get him out of danger as well as beautiful women in every scene that he's in. It also has the villains in the film being not as powerful as in the "Bond" movies and not running an entire shadowy and secret organization that Palmer is confronted with that makes the movie a lot more believable.

There is a suspicious brain drain in Britain. Scientist Radcliffe is kidnapped off of a train. Harry Palmer (Michael Caine) is stuck doing mind-numbing surveillance. His boss Colonel Ross pulls him out after 2 months in the doghouse and transfers him to counter-intelligence headed by paperwork-obsessed Major Dalby. Unconventional Palmer tracks Radcliffe to a warehouse. Radcliffe isn't there but there is a tape labeled IPCRESS. Dalby tells him to open an Ipcress File.I love the style. I love the bureaucratic side of espionage. I also love Michael Caine's cool demeanor. I love the first two thirds of the movie. The last act is questionable. It's a bit too cheesy. There isn't enough tension. It needs some more action. Also I'm not sure why the conspirators do what they do. It feels different from the first parts of the movie.

THE IPCRESS FILE covers familiar territory of a Cold War spy thriller; it contains an incomprehensible plot, a fair share of untrustworthy characters, and a subject (The Ipcress File) which is never satisfactorily explained. Suffice to say that Harry Palmer (Michael Caine) discovers the cause of all the trouble, but only after a considerable degree of suffering at the hands of a torturer (Frank Gatliff).What makes Sidney J. Furie's film so memorable is its shooting-style (photography by Otto Heller). It makes use of the basic shot- reverse shot sequence, but every frame is partially obscured by an object, or person placed close to the camera; we seldom see the characters' faces in full profile. This strategy helps to create an atmosphere of menace, where nothing is quite as it seems, and every mission suggested to Harry by his two bosses Dalby (Nigel Green) and Ross (Guy Doleman) appears to have ulterior motives behind it that Palmer remains blissfully unaware of. Palmer himself retains his integrity throughout, even if he perceives himself as something of a rebel within the Secret Service.THE IPCRESS FILE is a direct antithesis of the Bond canon of films, also popular at the time of release. It is set in a grimy, rain- sodden London full of gray buildings and dark interior; no exotic locations for this spy. The most colorful aspect of the mise-en- scene are the big old-fashioned Routemaster buses that drive up and down familiar streets - Piccadilly, Whitehall, Oxford Street. Palmer himself lives in a shabby apartment; his one concession to the so-called 'Swinging Sixties' spirit is an ability to cook, but no one, not least his colleague Jean (Sue Lloyd) seems especially interested. The film inevitably incorporates some of the sexist attitudes of the time - for Palmer all women are "birds," and they do not become actively involved in any espionage activity. The film is a very masculinist piece, with legions of actors dressed in long coats, trilby hats and dark suits. Palmer himself has a good sartorial sense, but even he adopts the same uniform, especially when in pursuit of the enemy.Michael Caine, in a pre-ALFIE role, shows all the cockiness characteristic of his youthful period, when he really believed he could challenge the status quo. Whether he succeeds or not is very much open to debate.