why does this film get such bad reviews?

In the novel he doesn't have any civilian job at all, though he's got several fake identities and passport, and has lived in Britain since around 1936-37. The British have never been fond of paper bureaucracy but I doubt you could keep out of the eye of the authorities for years like that - after all, he's physically fit and in an age when he'd have been liable to serve in the armed forces.

I loved this movie (saw it in the theatre, due to the rising fame of Sutherland, who I liked in the remake of "Invasion of The Body Snatchers".
If you can handle sweeping music, lots of great outdoor scenes and a slow but suspenseful murder-mystery, I would recommend it highly. Yes, it gets strangely sappy at times, and yes, you may yell at the heroine of the movie several times for her stupidity, but hey, in the end it leaves you wanting more- with that haunted feeling that a good film should leave in your mind.
Definitely in my list of favorite films of all time.

Bad reviews by whom? Radio Times is an awful magazine, I get my listing from the digital box or the Guardian's The Guide. Roger Ebert, who for all his failings, knows a good film, gave the Eye of the Needle a solid review, 3 stars.

Those of you who complain about the historical accuracy/his eligibility to serve in the army are slightly missing the point I feel. A thriller doesn't have to be historically accurate - The Jackal's plot didn't actually happen, this doesn't change it as a film. As for Henry serving in the army, the film makes explicit references to his not serving, it's an enigma like many aspects of his character; that's not to say you've 'got one over' Marquand or the scriptwriter in noticing this.

I don't know

this is a great and very underrated movie

I Worship The Goddess Amber Tamblyn

I liked it and so did Siskel and Ebert.

This was like 20 percent spy movie, ruined when they added the relationship, I thought there would be good dialogue between him and the girl, not some unloyal wife. Before they met, it was a spy movie, so maybe 50 percent, ruined film for me.

I'm amazed, too. It's better than most war movies and was a box office hit the year it was released. Perhaps a lot of people thought Sutherland was miscast as Faber because in the best-selling novel the Nazi spy is tall, dark, and handsome, not to mention, aristocratic. Yet Sutherland is such a great actor in anything he does that we can overlook this.

Most books are monumentally superior to the film adaptions, and this one is no exception, although it is always thrilling to watch. I have it on DVD and every time I play it, I go overboard and watch it over and over. Then I have to wait a few years before I do it again. Right now I am listening to the Audible version and will have to put the CD set in the audio player of my car. It's my favorite spy tale of all time. I just downloaded the book on kindle for the first time, and am trying to talk myself out of watching the movie yet again. Hard to do.

You might be interested to know that before Follett even wrote the book, he imagined Kate Nelligan as the heroine Lucy Rose. The author was struck by her classic English Rose type loveliness and wouldn't sell his story to M.G.M. until they agreed to cast her as the leading lady. It's a good thing she was a very fine stage-trained actress, because Sutherland was extremely good and Christopher Cazenove stole every scene he was in.

Nelligan was always difficult to work with, although she was great on television in 1975 opposite Richard Chamberlain and Tony Curtis in The Count of Monte Cristo, and terrific in the title role of Eleni (1986) opposite John Malkovich, Oscar winner Linda Hunt, and the vastly underrated Oliver Cotton. She was finally recognized for the great actress she is when she was Oscar-nominated for her role as Nick Nolte's long-suffering Southern mother in The Prince of Tides, the best film she ever appeared in. Mercedes Rhuel won the Best Supporting Award that year for The Fisher King, but Nelligan deserved it as well. I agree that she should have been a major star, but all the truly talented ones rarely achieve stardom.