TV REVIEWS : KGB Tries to Switch Off Gorbachev in HBO’s ‘Red King’

HBO’s “Red King, White Knight” gives us an early look at the shape of East-West spy movies in the liberalized era of glasnost and perestroika : The KGB remains rigidly evil, only this time its primary target is not in Washington but in Moscow.

General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev.

Airing at 9 tonight, “Red King, White Knight” finds the Soviet leader marked for assassination by hard-liners within the Kremlin who are threatened by his revolutionary agenda of reform. When the CIA hears of the plot, former agent Bill Stoner (Tom Skerritt) is dispatched to Moscow to check it out. During his adventures, Stoner is reunited with his former girlfriend Anna (Helen Mirren) and faces his old KGB adversary Szaz (Max Von Sydow).

“Red King, White Knight” is good-looking and well acted, and Ron Hutchinson’s script has interesting facets:

* The possibility that the assassination would get de facto support from influential members of the U.S. government who have too much invested in the Cold War status quo to let Gorbachev survive.

* The irony of an American being in a position to perhaps give his life for glasnost .

Although the premise is arresting, Hutchinson and director Geoff Murphy allow too many small things to chip away at its credibility:

* Once in Moscow, Stoner would check in with Washington on an open phone?

* The top KGB conspirator (Tom Bell) would be personally present for all dirty work and would call attention to his plot by authorizing the bloody murder of a double agent in a busy airport?

* The designated Gorbachev assassin (Gavin O’Herlihy) would wear a constant sneer? For a contrast, note Edward Fox’s brilliantly subtle political assassin in “The Day of the Jackal,” the suspenseful movie version of a Frederick Forsyth best seller that “Red King, White Knight” seems in part patterned after.

Still more lethal is the story’s ultimate predictability--not because the designated victim is someone still alive, but because the converging protagonists follow paths that seem obvious and predestined. Accordingly, the new look in East-West spy movies still needs refining.

* RELATED STORY: F2