Ryszard Kulinski (Jack Strong) ID: photo - wiki
Talking to reporters during a break in the location shooting in Warsaw, Patrick Wilson, who recently starred in Ridley Scott’s Prometheus, said that being on the cast of Jack Strong - an alias given to Kuklinski, a controversial Polish army colonel who worked for the CIA during the communist period - is “both an honour and challenge” for him.
“It seems to me that the story of Ryszard Kuklinski is known to only a handful of Americans and this is an extraordinary story,” he said.
Wilson is married to a Polish-born actress Dagmara Dominczyk, who appears in the film as Sue, a member of the US Embassy staff in Warsaw.
She left Poland at the age of seven with her parents and sister, following an almost year-long internment of her father, a Solidarity activist.
“Having read the script of ‘Jack Strong’, I immediately phoned my dad and asked for advise as I didn’t know much about Kuklinski. And he said: He was a great hero. Take the role!”, she told reporters.
From Warsaw, the production team is to move to other parts of Poland, the United States and, most probably, to Mocow. The film’s premiere is scheduled for the end of 2013 or the beginning of 2014.
The film is written and directed by Wladyslaw Pasikowski. Poland’s top actor Marcin Dorocinski appears as the main hero.
Ryszard Kuklinski passed over 40, 000 pages of mostly Soviet secret documents to the CIA between 1971 and 1981.
They described, among other things, plans for the imposition of martial law in Poland.
Shortly after the declaration of martial law in December 1981, Kuklinski was extracted from Poland by the CIA, along with his family.
In 1984, a military court in Warsaw sentenced him to death.
The sentence was annulled after the fall of communism.
Kuklinski visited Poland in 1998. He died in Florida in 2004 and is buried at the Powązski Cemetery in Warsaw.
Both of his sons died in unexplained circumstances in 1993 and 1994. (mk/pg)