'Farewell' to the Soviet Union, colonel

Based on a real and little-known espionage case, the French film "Farewell" tells the story of a disillusioned KGB colonel who in the early 1980s tried to save a decaying Soviet Union by betraying it.

In exchange for little more than a Sony Walkman for his teenage son, Sergei Grigoriev (Emir Kusturica) smuggles documents to the U.S. through an unlikely, often unwilling middleman, a French engineer named Pierre Froment (Guillaume Canet, himself a well-known director). Grigoriev's reasons seem almost too idealistic to believe: By exposing Russia's weaknesses, he hopes to hasten the country toward perestroika.

Though "Farewell" deals in global politics, director Christian Carion plays it like a small-scale drama. Grigoriev, a fatalist still clinging to hope, gradually convinces Froment, an unassuming family man, that the world is larger than he thinks.

The film sometimes breaks its own spell (Fred Ward shows up as Ronald Reagan), but Kusturica always reweaves it with his aching, world-weary performance. In the end, the movie isn't about two powerful countries but one vulnerable man.