While the story of Ashraf Marwan is undoubtedly a fascinating one and deserves to have a movie made about it, I feel that this one misses the mark by quite a bit. I'm not referring to the trivial anachronisms and goofs (like the wrong Arabic accents, or KC and the Sunshine Band song played before its time) which have already been pointed out in other reviews, but to much more substantial historical inaccuracies and omissions. Main examples:
1) I could find no record of the botched attempt on the El Al plane in Rome which opens the movie, much less that Marwan personally smuggled the (sabotaged) weapons for it or was nearby when the Italian police closed in... seems like an incredibly risky thing to do for an Egyptian presidential aide
2) The movie's ending presents 2 false alarms of an imminent Egyptian invasion as a premeditated plan thought up to lull Israel into complacency. In fact there was only 1 false alarm (in May 1973) and Sadat postponed it due to a Syrian request, not because of some masterful plan of deception.
3) If Marwan really thought a no-win outcome for a war would be the best guarantee for peace, how was he so sure that warning Israel ahead of time would achieve that? Maybe his betrayal of information would be the one to tip the balance and ensure an Israeli victory, preventing the exact outcome he wanted to achieve.
Which brings us to the main one:
4) No real explanation or hint on why Marwan would spy for the Israelis. Seems it was done for money. To say it was all part of grand master plan to level the playing field and bring peace to the Middle Easy seems a bit hard to believe.
Other than that: it was suspenseful, the 70s atmosphere was largely credible, so overall it was not a waste of time to me.
