jjnxn-1 Enjoyable if dated, they are still using punch cards to program their computers!, espionage thriller with a solid cast. Caine is cool as ice as the reluctant protagonist casting a jaundiced eye on all the shenanigans going on around him. Francoise Dorleac is a lovely mystery woman although her character seems to vanish at several key points in the film when it feels like she would be there. This might be because she was killed in a traffic accident while the picture was still filming necessitating a rethinking to still make her completed work usable. She's quite magnetic, her resemblance to her sister Catherine Deneuve is striking, and her death cut short a career that was already very successful in France and was starting to expand worldwide. Ed Begley also stands out, having a great time as a crazy old coot. Subtle he ain't but memorable for sure.

st-shot Former British Secret Service agent Harry Palmer (Michael Caine ) now a private investigator is given a package to deliver to a man in Helsinki. Palmer''s suspicions however get the best of him. He discovers that the package contains live virus and is intended by some ultra right wing Texan to help him destroy the Red machine beginning with the invasion of Latvia. In the era of the secret agent craze Caine's Palmer was the anti Bond more scruffy than polished, the plots more gritty than glamorous. In this the last of the series it flirts with the Bond formula and falls on its face. Palmer's rumpled incertitude partially works due to the first half of the films convoluted structure but when dealing with a powerful megalomaniac with weapons of mass destruction in the latter third it becomes strictly a job for 007.Billion Dollar Brain's biggest misstep however is Ken Russell's direction. The idiosyncratic director's penchant for outlandish composition and expressionistic caricature are ill suited for action and suspense and his montages and tempo are flat and murky most of the time, his acerbic wit evident on occasion but out of place much of the time as it veers in and out of spoof. Billion Dollar Brain isn't worth a nickel of your time.

Martin Onassis Billion Dollar Brain was produced by Harry Saltzman, who produced the James Bond films of the 60s, and there are a lot of similarities between this film and those. The production is top-notch, the opening and closing credits have the same graphic quality, the music is similar, composed by the same John Barry? The lead of Harry Palmer is played by the fan favorite Michael Caine, with a sidekick/villain played by Karl Malden. There are the requisite intelligence superiors, the English played well by Guy Dolman, and the Russian side played by the very entertaining Oskar Homolka, who works the good-natured half-drunk Russian bear to the hilt.The movie wanders around quite a bit until a plot emerges about the typical psychopathic leader bent on some insanely ambitious scheme. What's different about this interpretation is that the villain is a Texas billionaire with the world's biggest computer who is bent on attacking communism by liberating Latvia in a surprise attack.We're not really let on to this actual motive until well into the second half, so the movie lacks a certain seriousness before that point. It's all sort of a pretty trip to Finland for Michael Caine to work with an old spy friend, and his pretty double-agent girlfriend.Michael Caine keeps the movie alive by being eminently watchable, and reacting subtly to whomever he shares scenes with. I'm half-latvian, and any movie that mentions this small nation is always a treat, but those scenes are so stereotypical of the bumbling communist eastern European living in barns that it's hard to take seriously. Creating an uprising in Latvia to destabilize the USSR is so ludicrous on its face as a plot, that it lacks the true peril of the classic Bond Villains' plans.The UK directors/producer obviously have it in for the Americans in this film, as the Texas villain is portrayed as a deeply insane aggressor.The plot seems fairly pointless, especially years after the end of the cold war, but the film retains a feel for the era, and is watchable for that as well. The production is beautiful, and reminds one of how cinema worked before CGI, when all shots had to be prepped, executed and edited well. It's also a great winter film, leaving any filmographer wondering how they got through some of the shots.What the film lacks the most is finding a credible balance between it's lighter side and a serious, bleak story about cold war standoffs. It says things, but then doesn't really back them up. The computer gets a huge amount of screen time, but ends up essentially irrelevant to the story. The sets look the same as in Collosus: The Forbin Project which said much more about the influence of computers on humans. The film is kind of a weak amalgam of Dr Strangelove, Bond, and Colossus, except the computer is not in control.The final invasion sequence has some cool elements, including a German winter half-track that shows up in Where Eagles Dare, good costumes and an exciting unusual demise, but the believability of the invasion itself really suffers, after the film was somewhat geographically credible up until that point.The actors are good, the production watchable and entertaining, but the plot politics are totally dated, the film doesn't know whether its a thriller or a farce and I would not purchase this movie or even watch it again.

ma-cortes This is the third of the Harry Palmer spy stories which made Caine a big name star as sympathetic crook turned int secret agent. Nowadays Harry forced into retirement works as private eye . Henry encounters himself privately recruited by the British Secret Agency and he's again hired by MI6 and his colonel Ross(Guy Doleman, usual in the trilogy). He must to deliver a thermos flask containing an estrange eggs to American(Karl Malden) resident in Finland. Harry gets a little help from a gorgeous woman(Francois Dorleac sister to Catherine Deneuve and deceased by car crash) but treachery is all around and he starts to doubt of his partners. Meanwhile a millionaire Texan(an overacting and blustering Ed Begley) prepares a military uprising in Estonia with the help of a billion dollar computer.His objective is the overthrowing communism by means a coup de'Etat in Riga. Meanwhile the Russian intelligence officer( a wickedly comic Oskar Homolka who appeared in 'Funeral in Berlin' as defector) in charge of Russian espionage tries detain it.Michael Caine as deadpan, flabby anti-hero is phenomenal , he makes a delightful creation as the cockney secret agent, an immensely agreeable role. Packs solid scenes such as the final spectacular icebound highlights, among others . Appears uncredited Donald Sutherland as a scientist at computer. This exciting picture displays a James Bond style , in fact the producer is Harry Saltzman in charge of OO7 production. Emotive musical score including sensible leitmotif by Richard Rodney Barrett. Colorful cinematography reflecting splendidly the freeze outdoors by Billy Williams. The motion picture is well directed by Ken Rusell,who adds his peculiar style in some frames. The best adaptation based upon the bestseller by Len Deighton is ¨Ipcress file(65)¨ by Sidney J Furie, it's followed by ¨Funeral in Berlin¨ (66) by Guy Hamilton and continues the series with inferior renditions for TV, titled ¨Bullet to Beijing(95)¨ and ¨Midnight in Saint Petesburg(97)¨ by George Mihalka.