Metacritic reviews

Harry Palmer, charismatic but grounded in reality, is the perfect popular bridge between the spectacular escapades of Bond and the cold, harsh milieu of Deighton's embittered, betrayed spies.

In the end, The Ipcress File abandons its more low-key, nuts-and-bolts depiction of spycraft, and as such morphs from the pure antithesis of a 007 romp into something far closer to a self-serious send-up.

Caine's star-quality and absolute ease in front of the camera are fully formed.

This eerie (and nowadays somewhat kitsch) spectacle aside, helmer Stanley J Furie opts for spycraft nitty-gritty over suspense. However, he doesn't skimp on style: with the action lensed from an array of low, skewed angles, even a trip to the supermarket rouses the retina.

Director Sidney J Furie’s indulgence of the queer manners of an army-based British spy culture remains seductive, as does Caine’s rash character, a mild flirt who is proud of his cooking skills (a superior calls him ‘insubordinate… insolent… a trickster… perhaps with criminal properties…’). More quaint is the film’s dated science.

The Ipcress File is as classy a spy film as you could ask to see.

Pic does not build up to the type of suspense usually demanded of such thrillers.

The film now seems less urbane and innovative, more coldly flashy and bluntly affected -- full of sound and Furie, signifying little. [2 June 1987, p.Cal-1]

The Ipcress File was reasonably entertaining while I was watching it, but after it was over I felt I'd been had... Among the tiresome directorial tricks in The Ipcress File is the repetitively off-angle anti-climax with the heavies feeding parking meters, hibernating in libraries, and plotting at band concerts. Nothing happens most of the time, and this is supposed to be funny and ironic.