By Lee Pfeiffer
Operation C.I.A. is a 1965 adventure that gave an early starring role to Burt Reynolds, who at that time was primarily known as a TV actor. The movie represents that by-gone era in which certain films were specifically created to be the bottom half of double bills. The irony is that many of these "disposable" vehicles now look superior to much of what is produced today at a cost of tens of millions of dollars. What is intriguing about Operation C.I.A. is that it represents one of the last movies to address the hotbed political situation in Vietnam before the war went into full gear. Unlike today, when moviemakers routinely make the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq the backdrop for major films, once the Vietnam conflict became very contentious, studios avoided the subject like the plague. Virtually the only movie to openly set a storyline in the midst of the war was John Wayne's The Green Berets. That film took until 1968 to get off the ground and Wayne expended all of his considerable influence before he twisted Jack Warner's arm to provide financing because it took a right wing stand in an era in which protests against the war were at a fever pitch.