Thoughts on the film

SPOILERS

I enjoyed it tremendously. Smashing performances all round.

I quite liked the ending. I think we were meant to conclude that there had been no-one trying to kill the older Sally, that it had all been in her mind. Do you remember how surprised Lord Romer was at the suggestion that he was having her watched? And the subplot about Ruth's German boyfriend and his involvement with Baader-Meinhof was just a red herring to make us think there was something more sinister afoot (well, at least I think so).

The effect that Sally/Eva's wartime experiences had on her, and that she was double crossed by the man she loved, must have given her terrible paranoia which was exacerbated by age.

I agree, I did not like the ending, I thought the first episode was much better. SPOILERS I know it is based on the novel which I haven't read but it seemed to me kind of obvious that he was always going to be the one who betrayed her and we never even found out why he was a Russian spy.

Time that you enjoy wasting is not wasted time.

Superb bit if television, I liked the ending.
To me it shows that, regardless of if the threat is true or imaginary, the restlessness will never leave you if you've had a life like that.
It sounds very familiar to the things I've heard during my talks with people who lived trough the war and were involved in some dangerous operations.

Complaining about mistakes is almost as bad as complaining about complaining about mistakes.

Well, I thought the twist was going to be that Eva/Sally was developing dementia and that some or none of it was true.

I do think she was paranoid. If they had wanted to kill her and she had been under surveillance, they would have gotten to her before she got to Romer.

I thought this was bloody excellent. The cutting back and forth from past to present was a wonderful technique, impeccably used. I think the fact that Boyd wrote both the screenplay and novel helped. The narrative, including the ending, leads only to one conclusion: there is never an end, the game goes on. The surprise penultimate plot development was brilliantly hidden, and it took Ava, a peerless spook, to tell the tale. Yet she will never cease her vigilance. That's the point. The acting was uniformly superb. What I think I liked best though was the intelligence of the whole production. It harkens back to Alec Guiness' portrayal of Smiley, in Smiley's People. It demands concentration and patience--qualities sorely lacking today. Bravo Sundance for bringing it to American audiences.

Restless was only so-so. I'd give it 2.3 out of 5 stars. The show's main fault wasn't what was shown, but what wasn't shown. I think the series needed at least 1, preferably 2, more episodes to flesh out the story. All of the action in the film just happened, none of it was built up. Another poster mentioned that this program was based on a novel, and I can believe it because I felt like I was watching only part of a larger story. All of the actors involved were good actors, however, none of them had the kind of chemistry with each other that was needed to make up for the abbreviated storytelling. Also, the show didn't seem to know what to do with Ruth's son; I think that his character could have been eliminated altogether. Charlotte Rampling and Michael Gambon did not correspond to Hayley Atwell and Rufus Sewell. They each did well in their respective eras, but they weren't convincing as the older/younger versions of each other. (They should have gotten the people who used to cast for an American TV show called Cold Case; those people had younger/older casting perfected to a science.)