The Osterman Weekend is a 1983 American suspense thriller film directed by Sam Peckinpah, based on the 1972 novel of the same name by Robert Ludlum. The film stars Rutger Hauer, John Hurt, Burt Lancaster, Dennis Hopper, Meg Foster, Helen Shaver, Chris Sarandon and Craig T. Nelson. It was Peckinpah's final film before his death in 1984. Plot CIA director Maxwell Danforth (Burt Lancaster) watches a recording of agent Laurence Fassett (John Hurt) and his wife having sex. When Fassett goes to the shower, two KGB assassins enter the bedroom and kill his wife. The CIA had in fact sanctioned her killing. Fassett, unaware of his employer's involvement, is consumed by grief and rage. He hunts the assassins, eventually uncovering a Soviet spy network known as Omega. Fassett points to three men as the top Omega agents: Bernard Osterman (Craig T. Nelson), a television producer who knows martial arts; Richard Tremayne (Dennis Hopper), a plastic surgeon; and stock trader Joseph Cardone (Chris Sarandon). Rather than arrest the three members, which would alarm the KGB, Fassett proposes to the CIA director that they turn one of them to the side of the West in order to unravel the entire network more efficiently. Fassett sees an opportunity in John Tanner (Rutger Hauer), a controversial television journalist who is highly critical of government abuses of power. Tanner has been close friends with the three men since all four were at Berkeley together, and Fassett believes Tanner can successfully turn one of them. The CIA contacts Tanner and Fassett tells him that his closest friends are Omega agents. Although initially highly skeptical, Tanner becomes more convinced as Fassett shows him videotaped evidence of his friends talking with a Russian man, whom Fassett identifies as a KGB agent. In three different video clips, the Russian man discusses with Cardone the prospect of "targeting" Tanner, seeing him as a threat; Tremayne expresses his desire to leave the country when "it" goes down; Osterman talks about wanting to see "radical change" in the current system, but makes clear that he's only interested if paid handsomely, asking for a Swiss bank account. Tanner eventually agrees to try turning one of them at their annual reunion, which is coming up that weekend (these reunions are named "Ostermans", in honour of their initial sponsor), which this year is being held at Tanner's house; but only on the condition that Danforth,