"One of the strangest and most mercurial movies ever made in Hollywood. A veritable salad of mixed genres and emotional textures, this exciting black-and-white cold war thriller runs more than two hours and never flags for an instant. Produced by director John Frankenheimer and screenwriter George Axelrod, the film was made with an unusual amount of freedom, which pays off in multiple dividends…Angela Lansbury and Laurence Harvey, both brilliantly cast, have never been better; Sinatra and Janet Leigh have never been used as weirdly…A powerful experience, alternately corrosive with dark parodic humor, suspenseful, moving, and terrifying." (Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader)