The Man Nobody Knew: In Search of My Father, CIA Spymaster William Colby (2011)

Simply Perfect

Overrated and overhyped

Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

If the filmmaker wants to make a personal video memory of his dad, so be it. But to serve up this documentary as something serious, with dramatic and political context for a wider audience, then the filmmaker totally fails. It has too little structure, tension, and journalistic effort to make an engrossing movie. So many follow-up questions aren't asked, so much nostalgic remembrances by family members that serve no purpose to a general audience, so many digressions, and no real examination of the times. This might make a good present to other members of the director's family, but as something to leave the house and go buy a ticket at a theatre, forget about it.

This documentary on William Colby was created and directed by his son Carl Colby. William Colby was a hero during WW2,engaged in secret operations behind enemy lines to disrupt the Nazis. He then played a major role in the Vietnam War, leading CIA operations, for the US, in South Vietnam. After the war, he was appointed by President Nixon to become the head of the CIA here in the States. However, when a clandestine program was uncovered, that was implemented during his tenure in Vietnam, he became the target of harsh questioning by Congress and eventually became the "fall guy" for the Ford Administration and was forced to resign.After leaving Washington, it seems Colby's personal life was radically altered and became quite mysterious--leading eventually to a controversial end.You get the sense while watching this interesting and informative documentary that William Colby was amazingly talented and helped his country enormously during his tenure as a public servant. However, you never really get a sense of his personality and thus you can understand the title of the film, as his own son struggled with the same problem.Overall, if you like history and recalling events of the past few decades the film is worth seeing.

A career retrospective of former CIA director William Colby, who stepped in to bite the bullet when congress smelled blood following Watergate and the Vietnam War. Left with nothing more than photos and questions in the wake of his father's mysterious disappearance on an early-morning canoe ride, Colby's filmmaker son doesn't seem to have any alternative but to seek his answers in the past. The result is a startlingly open, sweeping glimpse at the CIA's involvement in Cold War politics and the Kennedy / Nixon regimes. At times it's very dry, but the narrative is constantly loaded with historical nuggets from the men who lived it - like the kind of programming we could expect from the History Channel before it turned into whatever it is now. It's strange that, as the scale increases, Colby almost becomes an afterthought in his own story, but the film certainly tells a better story because of it. Bittersweet, insightful and informative, if too reliant on talking heads and Ken Burns photo zooms.

The only person who would have ever thought about making a film documentary of former CIA Director William Colby must be related to him. In fact, his son Carl Colby did just that. William Colby was a driven individual who lived during interesting times and ended up in a fascinating job; however, this does not increase his suitability to carry an entire documentary.Intercutting very intriguing historical film vignettes, nostalgic and archived pictures, and one-on-one interviews with some very famous and influential public servants from the last few decades, The Man Nobody Knew: In Search of my Father CIA Spymaster William Colby charts the course of Colby's life from the attack on Pearl Harbor until his death five decades later. The main subjects include Colby's involvement in the earliest form of the Office of Strategic Services, his time in Italy in the 1950s, his back and forth involvement in Vietnam from America's earliest involvement to its last gasp, and his controversial stint as CIA Director.The historical film footage dug up and effectively edited is the best part of this documentary. A lot of this footage is from familiar places we have all seen in documentaries before, but this footage seems new and freshly unearthed. There are scenes from the 1941 Pearl Harbor attack with lifeless casualties floating in the water, there are scenes of brutal interrogation methods from the Vietnamese jungle, and most compelling, there are scenes where we listen to President Kennedy and his brother discuss overthrowing the South Vietnamese President. Colby was the CIA station chief in Vietnam from 1959-1962 and knew the players very well there. The arrival of new Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge, his destructive heavy-handedness, and the eventual coup and assassination of President Diem and his brother are shocking to see even in 2011.Vietnam and its Phoenix Program would go on to define and represent Colby for the rest of his life. President Nixon appointed him CIA Director in 1973 after he fired Richard Helms for not helping enough to cover up Watergate. However, Colby was not a party man. He would not roll over and play fetch much to the consternation of President Ford. Ford appreciated loyalty more than anything else which is why Colby was eventually let go. There is a very telling monologue from Bob Woodward who paraphrases that President Ford told him he valued loyalty as number one which is why Cheney, Rumsfeld, and George Bush Sr. were his go to guys. There are eerie shadows of the future in 1975 footage of Bush Sr. assuming the job of CIA Director and Cheney and Rumsfeld in the background in certain scenes.It is not Colby's fault that most of this documentary is just nice to know, gee-whiz information. Perhaps if Carl Colby chose to only focus on the Vietnam era issues this film would pack more of a punch. The up close interviews with people such as Zbigniew Brzezinski, Brent Scowcroft, Rumsfeld, and Woodward are very telling, but they concern a man who had such a brief stint in the public eye that it is surprising there was not much to uncover in his private life. Colby was a guy who went to work every day and tried to maintain a steady family life; gentlemen such as this usually do not make for intriguing documentary subjects.His family life is explored and there is significant time devoted to his wife who provides information on their social lives while in Italy and Vietnam. Carl Colby shows he still has some very deep 'daddy' issues claiming his father was very distant, did not have any friends, could be cold, etc… It is hard to say what William Colby would think about this documentary if he were still alive. He was a very private man who kept his personal business at home so he probably would not appreciate its close examination. Furthermore, Carl was just a child during most of his father's CIA clandestine activities so there is a logical answer to the filmmaker's frequent exclamation that he never really knew who his father was.