The Falcon and the Snowman (1985) on Netflix
R19852h 11mBiographyCrimeDrama
Christopher Boyce handles classified communiqués for a defense contractor and decides to sell secrets to the Soviets. His childhood friend Daulton Lee, a cocaine smuggler, becomes his courier.
- Netflix3.4/5
- IMDb6.8/1014,284 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes83%
Trailer
Plot summary
Christopher Boyce and Andrew Lee, known by his middle name Daulton, grew up in southern California as altar boys and remain friends as adults. Chris is regarded as the steady one, while Daulton uses and sells drugs and has a criminal record. After Chris leaves seminary school, his father, a former FBI agent, arranges a job for him at the defense contractor RTX. He rises from the mail room to a security communications post, handling secret cables for clients that include the CIA. The material he reads about American meddling abroad, among it a plan to remove Australia's elected prime minister, turns him against the government. Seeing lax security at RTX, he chooses to pass secrets to the Soviet Union. Daulton, hoping for money, agrees to carry them to Mexico City.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about The Falcon and the Snowman (1985)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- On April 27, 1986, an HBO broadcast of the film was interrupted for 4.5 minutes by a pirate broadcast protesting the network's introduction of signal scrambling and higher charges for satellite dish owners; the incident made national headlines and the hacker, an electrical engineer, was arrested and fined $5,000.
- Steven Zaillian's screenplay is based on Robert Lindsey's 1979 book The Falcon and the Snowman: A True Story of Friendship and Espionage, and tells the true story of two young American men, Christopher Boyce and Andrew Daulton Lee, who sold security secrets to the Soviet Union.
- The film's original music was performed by the Pat Metheny Group, and featured the singer David Bowie on the song This Is Not America.
