Squint at it too closely, and The Internecine Project (1974) falls apart under the stress of a design over-engineered to the point of ridiculousness. But it will surprise no reader of this blog that it landed for me nonetheless, as I suspect it will for most classic Mission: Impossible fans. The convoluted surface is so slick you’ll probably slide right off it in disbelief, yet there’s an appealing stylistic artistry, and an unexpected thematic core that resonates intensely with our current political dilemmas.
Professor Robert Elliot (James Coburn) is a famous American economist, currently on a press junket overseas. Secretly, Elliot is also a spy, handling a small, efficient network of agents in London. Elliott’s clandestine operations are a stepping stone to grander political ambitions, which are backed by a connected energy industry mogul named E.J. Farnsworth (Keenan Wynn). It’s time, Farnsworth reveals, for Elliot to make his move, which will propel him to a prominent role in the current presidential administration as a powerful, unelected advisor, his hand on the tiller of the American economy. But before he can ascend, he must tie off the loose ends of his scandalous espionage career, and that means eliminating his network. He therefore devises an elaborate scheme whereby his agents — a government official (Ian Hendry), a seductress (Christiane Krüger), a scientist (Michael Jayston), and a masseur (Harry Andrews) — all assassinate one another.
The Internecine Project possesses an infectious throwback spy-genre feel, playing out like a dark, standalone Mission: Impossible episode. With Coburn quarterbacking the proceedings like an antihero version of Jim Phelps, its mechanistic plot is foreshadowed in tantalizing fragments, then relies on patient visual story-telling as Elliot’s clockwork plan unfolds, jeopardized at key moments but unexpected developments. It even has a Schifrinesque soundtrack from Roy Budd, which, while a smidge monotonous, lends a certain jazzy suspense. Under scrutiny, Elliot’s three-dimensional chess introduces as many risks as it accounts for, occasionally making the affair feel like a Rube Goldberg contraption for the sake of it. Still, director Ken Hughes maneuvers the pieces compellingly. The film doesn’t go very deep detailing the network’s activities or why they are a threat, but Coburn does fine work keeping the viewer guessing about his conflicted motivations. Lee Grant, meanwhile, unlocks the messaging as a spiky romantic interest who may be an Achilles’ heel to Elliot’s conscience. While the film’s final plot twist is too abrupt and not quite clever enough to match the elaborate build-up, the final act is still satisfying thanks to a key scene between Coburn and Grant that illustrates a scathing point about ambitious men ignoring the law in the interest of power and control. It’s sheer coincidence I should discover this film in the opening stages of a perilous U.S. pivot into authoritarianism; against that backdrop, I suspect this imperfect but interesting film found a considerably more receptive audience.
