Wild At Heart
For those like me who had no idea who William Egan Colby was, here is a brief look at his public life courtesy of wikipedia. He spent a career in intelligence for the United States, culminating in holding the post of Director of Central Intelligence from September 1973 until he was replaced by George H W Bush in January 1976. He served with the Office of Strategic Services during World War II and joined the newly created Central Intelligence Agency afterwards. Before and during the Vietnam War, Colby served as Chief of Station in Saigon, Chief of the CIA's Far East Division, and head of the Civil Operations and Rural Development effort, as well as overseeing the Phoenix Program (all of which are looked at in the documentary). After Vietnam, Colby became Director of Central Intelligence under Nixon and Ford. In 1977, Colby entered public life and founded a DC law firm, Colby, Miller & Hanes, and worked on public policy issues.
On Saturday, April 27, 1996, Colby died in what appears to have been a boating accident near his home in Rock Point, Maryland. I do have some brief recollections of this from the news at the time and remember there was some suspicion of foul play despite being ruled a natural death. Of course, you can always expect that when a controversial spy figure dies when everyone believes he is healthy. Think of the number of spy thrillers where that happens.
However, this movie, by his son Carl Colby, is not a thriller but a documentary about his father’s career. William E Colby was a big player in some of the most interesting events of the middle part of the 20th Century, from Pearl Harbor to Vietnam. While not the most fascinating subject for a full length documentary, we do get a nice opening look at a spy during the start of the CIA’s career.
The documentary starts at the time he met his wife which coincides with the bombing of Pearl Harbor. We see him joining the army and working with Scandinavian troops to slow down Nazi movements in that part of the war. From there, we follow his family to Italy working with the OSS and then Saigon/Vietnam before ending up with his highly controversial stint as CIA Director.
The movie has some nice historical photos of his family and film clips of everything from dead bodies floating in the waters off Pearl Harbor to a wonderful fly-on-the-wall listen to President Kennedy talking about overthrowing of South Vietnamese President Diem. However, as the documentary moves on, it was hard for me to keep my focus on Colby’s life. I enjoyed the talks with his wife about what it was like to be a spy’s wife and how much she really knew about her husband’s work.
I feel I would have liked to have heard more from the family despite how young the kids were when the majority of the major events were going on. To truly get the man, I would have also liked to see more of his post-spy days up unto his death but that get puts on the back burner here. If the reason for this film was for Carl to know his father better, I’m not sure he really accomplished that goal by what is on the screen.
We have a lot of interviews with some heavy hitters but despite some talk about his early WWII training, I don’t feel I even got a real look into what made the man. The movie is a nice look at some of the history of Vietnam and a little brief tease about spy’s but I feel the urge for more information about the man and his family to truly get a feel for what his life was like.
Unfortunately, despite some nice historical footage and an interesting subject, I left the film feeling a bit unsatisfied. The film itself opens December 16th at the Maple Art Theatre.
My grade is a C+