lost-in-limbo In the opening scenes at a funeral you gotta love Michael Caine's explanation of blue ice. Typical dry British humour, which only Caine could nail down. "Blue Ice" is an often panned British espionage thriller, which I didn't mind despite its bleak and formulaic narrative with a saucy noir touch and an all-familiar hard-edge Caine performance. A former British spy now jazz club owner is asked by his mistress (who happens to be the wife of the American Ambassador) to find an old boyfriend and when he does he becomes embroiled in murder and something much more. Director Russell Mulcahy (who has always been a stylish film-maker) window dresses this thriller with jazzed up sophistication and inflated slickness amongst its suspense, brutality and sleepy London locations caught by his sweeping camera. The contrived plot is slow building, manipulating and toying with the protagonist in a fascinating manner and a sense of witty humour doesn't go astray. There's one sequence that really stood out for me, because of how surreal and nightmarish it becomes and that's the drug-induced interrogation of Caine's character. Sean Young plays it rather distantly cold as the sultry mistress. While the likes Ian Holm and Bob Hoskins have small parts. A sturdily told, if burnished 90s action thriller joint."Just put it down to blue ice".

trimmerb1234 Yes, it's a British action film and Sir Michael is rather too old and although he's a big man etc etc (see "Get Carter") to credibly do "action" in all its established forms including deeply impress hot chick (Sean Young) which by custom he is supposed to do. Reaction to it seems to be generous condemnation from domestic reviewers and moderate enjoyment elsewhere.The film itself rather resembles its own torture scene - a series of flash-backs but in this case of a dozen and more earlier movies some of which starred Caine or Bob Hoskins (one with the torture scene starred Dick Powell). That is a mixed blessing - on the down side it has all been done and seen before, some as has been noted, in British budget made-for-TV series - themselves lifted and downsized from big screen originals. This though is where all resemblances to the likes of "The Sweeney" and "The Professionals" ends.Here there's stars a-plenty, and a good British cast. Added to which is the lovely cinematography particularly of Soho night exteriors. Caine and Hoskins are inescapably stars and watchable whatever they do, this time they reprise some of their famous roles - Hoskins his star turn in "Long Good Friday." Caine "The Ipcress File and "Get Carter". Even Alun Armstrong gets it a second time doing a Caine a favour - thought he might have learnt by now. But audiences had left cinemas wanting more and here we have more. And no bad thing at all. Oh, one other thing, Harry Palmer didn't smile, Caine here does too much. Perhaps he was having too much fun and lacked a director willing to tell him. Remember what Roman Polanski is said to have said on the subject.

Theo Robertson What's Blue Ice ? According to this movie it's excrement that comes out from passing airliners . You wouldn't want to be below an overhead jet when someone flushes the loo . Come to think of it you really wouldn't want to watch this movie either unless there was absolutely nothing else onMichael Caine tries to play a Harry Palmer clone but unfortunately since it's a movie from the early 1990s it's obvious he just took the part for the pay cheque and it'd be a few more years until he started to choose his parts more carefully Bob Hoskins is another actor who basically ruined his career by not being too fussy about the quality of the scripts . BLUE ICE is probably summed up by Hoskin's being introduced by thus : There's a car chase , Hoskin's is getting pursued by men in balaclavas . This can mean only one thing - They're terrorists and this is confirmed by their Irish accents and the fact they're firing hundreds of rounds at Bob's car as they hunt their prey . Boy this could end up like THE LONG GOOD Friday , but Bob gets the better of his pursuers ( After 5 minutes of not very exciting action ) and the terrorists car ends up a right off with one of the bad guys lying on the road in very poor shape . Bob and his frightened driver approach the terrorist . Bob turns to his driver and shouts :" DO IT " Not a natural killer the driver reluctantly raises his machine gun and empties the magazine into the terrorist who now lies dead , the victim of a ruthless execution " Okay " says Bob " Get up " and the terrorist defies the laws of nature by standing to his feet . In fact all the dead terrorists come to life as Bob points to them . Has he got supernatural powers ? " Don't drive so close to the target car , you don't hesitate to fire . You ... "Ah so it wasn't a terrorist attack at all , it's a sneaky little cheat at the expense of the audience . This worked very well - In nineteen forty something . Unfortunately by the time this plays out on screen the audience were probably expecting it and it's not a spoiler so don't complain . If you see BLUE ICE and end up being disappointed with it don't complain because I told you so

diorio2001 I had passed an eye over this video sitting on the shelf at the local video store several times. Although I consider myself to be a Michael Caine fan, I neglected to ever rent BLUE ICE, because of poor reviews and ratings. The other day however I was once again at the video store and this time decided to check out this film. I was extremely surprised (in a good way) at BLUE ICE. I wasn't expecting it to be as good as it was. The plot was a little bit hard to swallow, but all spy movies are like that. I thought the cinematography was wonderful and I especially like the intriguing, yet bizarre torture scene montage.Michael Caine played an ex-spy and despite his age and not being in great shape, Sir Michael pulled off a wonderful performance. The movie was so interesting (though confusing at parts) I can honestly say that I wasn't bored for a minute. Sean Young's performance wasn't too impressing, but luckily it wasn't so terrible that it deterred my interest in the movie. Ian Holm and Bob Hoskins some good scenes, but I wish that their parts were bigger.BLUE ICE isn't Michael Caine's best movie, but God knows, it's not his worst either. All-in-all I give BLUE ICE 3 ½ out of 5.