Here’s a golden chance to watch Sean Connery and Michelle Pfeiffer, in a John le Carré story about spies of three countries vying for explosive Russian nuclear data.

Out of the past comes a 2009 dark, romantic love and espionage story that shines a new light on those two stars.

With the script written by Tom Stoppard, taken from le Carré’s book, it also features Roy Scheider (the beach town sheriff in “Jaws”) as a dapper CIA chief, and was directed by the great Fred Schepisi (Steve Martin’s “Roxanne,” “Six Degrees of Separation.”)

Amazon Prime’s streaming service has brought back for a new generation of viewers, a brilliant, intelligent Russian/American/British spy game thriller, that floats through London, Moscow and Leningrad, just after the fall of the Berlin Wall, when the Soviet Union blew up into modern Russia.

Connery appears as an clarinet playing alcoholic Barley Blair, the owner of a third rate British publishing house, who, while at a book fair in Moscow, meets a mystery man named Dante, (Klaus Maria Brandauer “Out of Africa”) at a Russia publisher’s party in the woods.

Dante offers access to a manuscript he wants smuggled to the West. His contact for Blair is an equally mysterious Katya (a breathtaking Michelle Pfeiffer) whom we learn, is Dante’s wife.

Things ignite almost from the start, when British Intelligence (James Fox) and the CIA (Scheider) pull Barley off the street and talk him into accepting the manuscript and with their help, get it to British and American intelligence.

It’s here we learn that the proffered notebooks are evidence of the Soviet Union’s nuclear warhead plans.

As in all John le Carré stories, people begin moving through rooms, massive book fairs, alleys, dark streets and woods, jazz bars, and Katya’s home that she shares with her little girl and charming uncle.

Slowly, as is the British style, love between Katya and Barley blooms, and a plan emerges to get the notebooks, Barley and Katya out of Russia.

But remember, this is John le Carré country, and the details, resembling Russian nesting dolls, begin to reveal themselves one by one.

Barley, an aging cynic, now deeply in love with Katya, has his own plan, one that the suit and tie spies from MI6 and the CIA don’t know about.

Schepisi’s direction butts heads with the British love for cautious pacing, but the film picks up steam on every street, crowd, dinner and jazz club, meetings in bell towers in Moscow, with a different figure nearby watching and listening.

The chemistry between Connery and Pfeiffer is as palpable as fine line paper, and equally as flammable.

Schepisi skillfully holds his stars in focus for long close up scenes, in her kitchen, the bedroom, walks in the park and a first kiss, and particularly in the final half hour.

Released in 2009, “The Russia House” is as bright and sparkling as if shot yesterday.

“The Russia House” streams on Amazon Prime.

J.P. Devine of Waterville is a former stage and screen actor.

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