MartinHafer After almost thirty years, Michael Caine is back playing Harry Palmer. However, it has been THIRTY YEARS--and, like the expression goes, you can never go back--and that certainly is true of "Bullet to Beijing". Unlike the earlier Palmer stories, Len Deighton was not involved with this one...and I think it shows. The first three films of the series ("The Ipcress File", "Funeral in Berlin" and "Billion Dollar Brain") were great--a nice alternative to a Bond film. Here, however, it looks like there is a lot more Bond and a lot less Harry Palmer.After three decades with the British secret service, Palmer is summarily retired without so much as a thank you. Soon, he receives an offer to work for someone else--though they don't identify who they are--they just give him a ticket to meet them in Russia. Harry takes the offer (why?) and soon is transported into a world completely unlike his earlier film efforts. Here is the problem--the film is again and again an ACTION film. But the earlier films deliberately avoided being action films. Sure, things happened--but most of the time Palmer stood by on the sidelines. And, there were none of the usual insane James Bond miraculous escapes. Here in "Bullet to Beijing", it's one action sequence after another after another--including way too many shootouts that resulted in folks with pistols taking out many folks with machine guns!!! Now I know a marksman can do amazing things with a pistol--but to again and again take out baddies with automatic weapons?! And, the other major problem is that folks keep changing sides!! Again and again, you need a scorecard to keep track of who is one who's side! To me, this just seemed sloppy. The overall effort is a passable ACTION film but one severely disappointing to those expecting the Harry Palmer of old. It's made worse by the end, where, inexplicably, the baddies just let Palmer go after he destroys their evil plan!!! Uggh.

Rodrigo Amaro Playing Harry Palmer, the most boring secret agent ever presented on screen (can't say if he's that boring on the books), Michael Caine has the mission of tracking down the formula of a nuclear weapon that is about to be delivered to North Korea by the Chinese. And Palmer is not working for his British comrades that decided to retire the man, but yes for the Russian, in the post Cold War scenario.Has to be one of the most uninteresting and weak developed spy films I've ever seen. Nothing so exciting happens, the plot is contrived, simplistic and dull, with nothing to say, dopey as hell. Gotta have some real nerve to enjoy something lifeless like this. In one of his weakest performances but not to the point of going to the Wall of Shame (like "Jaws 87"), Michael Caine is helpless in playing a character that isn't appealing like James Bond or clever and real as George Smiley. Jason Connery, Mia Sara, Michael Sarrazin, Burt Kwouk and Michael Gambon, they all didn't have much to do with a script that leaves somewhere to go nowhere.The more it reaches the end the worse it gets, and the only good moment out of "Bulllet to Beijing" is a sequence involving a car chase where Caine and Connery's son need to get in time to catch the Express train to Beijing. What a delightful way to waste your precious time. 3/10

gs20 Please disregard the review of this movie by "Dr_Yvon_COULARDEAU"......he clearly entered a review of some other film here by mistake....i think he was trying to review some version of "the Thomas Crown Affair".....first, there is no character in this movie named "Crown".........there is also no robbery with an insurance investigator involved.......i think it is odd that Dr_Yvon_COULARDEAU did not correct his mistake after he realized he reviewed the wrong movie........i think it is odd as well that no one from IMDb noticed either..........IMDb.......may i review a three stooges film and put it here or vice versa?.........Dr, a question.......do you often lose track of where you are?

rps-2 This was my kind of spy movie...really bad bad guys...really sexy sexpots...car chases...boat chases...mysterious trains crossing hostile borders and the worst gang of lousy shots you ever saw. They manage to dispatch any number of car windows but not very many people. But then it's hard to make a two hour movie if everybody dies in the first confrontation. Michael Caine is, well, Michael Caine. The plot is quite silly but that adds to its appeal. And there are great scenes in London, St. Petersberg and Siberia. The film captures the disorganized chaos of daily life in Russia and the devil may care attitudes of most Russians. (I've flown domestic routes on Aeroflot a couple of times. Believe me, the hilarious sequence in the movie of the flight to Irkutsk is not that much of an exaggeration.) It's probably more of a spoof than a spy thriller. But it's a damned good movie!