First of all, this is an entertaining movie, with the requisite suspense and action well done, interesting characters and good acting. Frankly, I don't see what all the griping is about.
Some of the comments downplay the historical accuracy of the movie, but from what I can learn online, the basic elements are astonishingly correct. The impact Eddie Chapman, an otherwise obscure criminal languishing in a remote jail, had on the course of World War II is, if anything, underplayed in the movie.
We've all seen the newsreel footage of V1 and V2 bombs falling on London. What they fail to mention is that they were not landing where the Germans thought they were aiming for. And we have Chapman to thank for that. He was sending back skewed information about the locations of impact, which led the Germans to correct their aim away from central London. That's a pretty sweet trick to play on the Germans. And that part of the story is absolutely true, though you have to listen closely to documentaries of WWII to catch any mention of it.
What the movie focuses on, instead, is Chapman, the audacious con man. Without reading his autobiography, it is hard to be sure of the details, but anyone who pulled off what he did must have been worthy of this portrayal.
What we also see is the fallibility of decision making by German leaders, contrary to the near omniscience they are sometimes credited with. Hinted at also is that some of those German military leaders were not totally loyal Nazis. There was a loose underground among the upper levels of the old military guard, people like Baron Von Grunen. You can read about the German underground, such as it was, on Wikipedia. It's good to see a movie that doesn't portray Nazis in simplistic stereotypes.
And it should be noted that Gert Fröbe, who was an actual member of the Nazi Party during the war, only used this as a cover to rescue Jews from the Holocaust, like a minor Oscar Schindler. BTW, I wonder if we hear Fröbe's actual voice here, unlike in Goldfinger?
Looking at the photo of the real Eddie Chapman, you wonder how he was such a ladies man, yet he was. The Christopher Plummer portrayal makes him look more glamorous than he probably was, as a sophisticated jewel thief, much like Cary Grant in To Catch a Thief, rather than a crook who burglarized movie theaters.
But the basic story is correct, and effectively portrayed. How would you feel being inside the Nazi Reich being trained as a spy to be sent to England, who might be uncovered with the slightest slip, by either side, and executed? The tension is well portrayed in the film.
However, and here is the spoiler, the movie's title is misleading: I can't find a triple cross, though he did cross enemy lines several times. He was a Brit who offered to work for the Germans, but when he got to England he never delivered; he went straight to British authorities and told them the truth. This was a very wise decision, because the British already knew something about his mission from their decoded German Enigma messages.
So the British then have him send back false intelligence to the Germans. That's a pretty good double cross, but then Chapman goes back to Germany, convinces them he is still working for them, and is eventually sent back to England again, where he sends back more false information. Truly amazing! But still only a double cross.
There is some brief mention of plans for the D Day invasion of France. It is well known that the Allies used General Patton in England to set up a ruse that we were planning to invade at Calais, which Hitler firmly believed. This deception was perpetrated on many levels, including a fictional corpse created with the help of Ian Flemming. Chapman may have sent back information confirming the presence of real troops around Patton, instead of the plywood tanks they actually had, though this is not stated in the movie.
So, while there is almost inevitably some fictional elements in a movie based on history, the fundamentals are accurate enough in Triple Cross for it to be a valuable supplement to factual information found in the countless documentaries about World War II. And the story is amazing enough that someone should make a genuine documentary about Eddie Chapman's exploits.
Eddie Chapman was a brave man, doubly so because when he conned the Germans, he had no way of knowing if England would win the war.
I highly recommend this movie.
