They, on the other hand, want to kill him. They are the CIA. Matthau plays a veteran field operative who breaks up a Soviet operation in Munich but fails to arrest the head of the KGB when he has him in the palm of his hand. Matthau's called back to Washington, where a new man (Ned Beatty) has taken over control of the department. Beatty is a veteran of the CIA's clandestine "dirty tricks" operation, and the movie hints that he was the guy behind sending the poisoned cigars to Castro, among other dumb stunts.
Anyway, Beatty yanks Matthau out of the field and assigns him to the filing department. Matthau doesn't like that. He destroys his own files, walks out of the agency, flies to Austria, and deliberately leads the CIA to believe that he has decided to cooperate with the Soviets. Then he has a rendezvous with an old love (Glenda Jackson), holes up in her chateau, and starts writing his memoirs. They include detailed revelations about CIA activities, and he mails each chapter to the world's leading spy agencies.
That does it. Beatty vows to "terminate" Matthau. Sam Waterston, another CIA official, suspects all along that Matthau's only having some pointed fun at Beatty's expense. But Beatty is not a man to enjoy a joke on himself.
Once this basic situation is established, "Hopscotch" turns into a picaresque comedy disguised as a thriller. Matthau hops all over two continents, hiding out under false passports and assumed names, and adding insult to injury at one point by actually buying Ned Beatty's summer cottage and moving into it. He also turns out to be devilishly clever at leading the CIA to expect one thing, and giving it another. His final deception, at the movie's end, cheats us a little (how did he do it?), but so what.
ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7s7vGnqmempWnwW%2BvzqZmq52mnrK4v46hpqmrk6TBpLSManBxaA%3D%3D