OK, so an American spy in the USSR takes control of its missiles and launches one against the US. The Soviets can't abort it on their own but once they find him and in his lair manage to abort the missiles just in time. Turns out the spy works not for the US government but for the military industrial complex. Except that he doesn't know it. Things become murky because one of the weapons industrialists is working against the other. One of them actually realizes that atomic war isn't good for business--his name: Blackmark. He hired the spy originally to grab one of the Soviets in charge of nuclear weapons because he has some secret failsafe in case something happens to him. What that failsafe is and why Blackmark would care we never find out. Another atomic weapons industrialist named Hillcrest who has formed a consortium of the 8 greatest arms dealers actually intercepts the spy's job and feeds him the order to launch the missile.

The Soviet guy has a sick daughter, a fact which the spy uses to turn the tables and actualy take the Soviet captive while he awaits new orders. Blackmark launches an operation to kill the Soviet guy to somehow end the cold war. But again Hillcrest gets ahead of things and warns the spy who by now has to join forces with the Soviet. The Soviet guy also has some other Soviet contact, who is CIA and who also initially works for Hillcrest and is at the same time the spy's official handler.

As a result of the missile launch, Kennedy decides to place Hillcrest's nuclear missiles in Turkey, something which Blackmark opposes because he sees it as a threat to the world. If Kennedy goes ahead with this plan there will be war. There are only two solutions, the Soviet ambassador warns Blackmark- remove Krushev or Kennedy. Blackmark decides to do the latter.

The movie is framed by the story of a woman talking to a FBI guy in the 80s. The woman--Anya--is the daughter of the Soviet guy. She lives in America, works at the Soviet embassy and has dedicated her life to finding the killers of her father. The FBI guy is mainly interested in finding the spy who apparently has gone rogue. Anya informs him that the spy is actually dead by now. Instead she offers to tell him who killed Kennedy.

So in the 60s we have the story of the spy and the Soviet trying to fend off Blackmark's men and the KGB. Then, there's battle between Blackmark and Hillcrest for absolute power over even the Pentagon. Additionally Blackmark has some German scientist working on a radio-chemical weapon and its anti-serum which Hillcrest wants to get his hands on. There's the story of the Soviet guy and his family. Finally there's the story taking place in the 80s.

As you can tell, there's an awful lot going on, much of which isn't clear to the viewer. It's interesting stuff, or should be interesting stuff. You have this second missile crisis during the cold war, the growing influence of the military industrial complex while fighting for power amongst itself, and the Kennedy assassination to boot. Unfortunately, Blackmark doesn't convince. Things are more convoluted than necessary. Morally, the script is ambiguous. It wants to moralize and lecture against war and the military industrial complex. But then the more charismatic character is Blackmark, who also gets a lot of screen time. He's the bad guy because he's a weapons manufacturer and is after power, but also a good guy because after all he realizes that wiping out the world isn't the answer. This ambiguity starts from the beginning with a speech by Kennedy about the dangers of some insidious dangerous force, which could be applied to a host of things, but bizarrely he applies to the Soviet Union. The movie wants to take a part of the speech out of context and apply it to the military industrial complex, which as mentioned could easily work. The hero of the movie is presumably the spy, but he's a morphine junky for some reason and we learn very little about him. Things do backfire for the script because it gets us to like both the Russian and Blackmark.

The script does have some interesting things to say and criticism of the status quo is always welcome. Blackmark near the end gives an I have a dream speech about what the ideal scenario of a weapons manufacturer would look like, well, it looks like America post-9/11.

Unfortunately the movie botches much of the good ideas behind it. Acting is unconvincing almost across the board. I doubt that the actors's fault. Rather it's probably the director's. Martinson who acts as producer/editor/writer/director should really have hired someone else to direct and probably also to edit. This is a case of an overly saturated script and a director/editor who is trying to cram everything in a movie. Plenty of things should have ended up on the editing room floor while more attention should have been placed on acting.

This is a good story and had plenty of potential. However, I'm sorry to say it is badly let down by a poor script and acting

What a delight to find such an excellent film from a director & cast previously unknown to me! I have no complaints about any aspect of this production. Poor reviews may come from people who refuse to embrace a storyline that doesn't align with previously published "history". Having read "THE GEMSTONE FILES" published in Hustler magazine in the 1970s I was intrigued with the believable details provided by the script. Anyone who thinks that we receive the real stories from our government or media is responding exactly as "they" desire. I found this film to be so intriguing that I had to download for future viewing. I highly recommend this movie to anyone how wants to be engaged & entertained by great actors previously under the radar and capable of holding the viewer's attention to the very end!