The Holcroft Covenant (1985) Until "The Bourne Identity" came along in 2002, a variety of filmmakers botched up their attempts to make sense of Robert Ludlum's twisty, pulse-pounding spy thrillers.
This one's especially sad, coming John Frankenheimer, the once brilliant crafter of propulsive cinema like "The Manchurian Candidate" and "The Train".
We've no idea how or why Frankenheimer lost his mojo with this one, but the results are painful to behold......a stilted, stale piece of spycraft, indifferently acted by the entire cast, including its star, Michael Caine.
Caine's the title Holcroft, an architect who discovers his late Nazi officer father left him a windfall of four and a half billion dollars.
Seems that late, unlamented daddy, along with two Nazi officer cohorts started the billion buck nest egg so Caine could administer the money to make the world a better place and never let Nazis rise to power again.
Okaaaaaay........
But to control the cash, Caine must sign a covenant along with the surviving descendants of those other two Nazis - a British journalist (Anthony Andrews) and a high strung German symphony conductor (Mario Adorf, the only one here having some fun by hamming it up. ) Along for the ride as a standard Pretty Girl In Distress is the journalist's alluring sister (Victoria Tennent).
Then off we go to London, Berlin and Geneva where various guys with silenced pistols take potshots at Caine and more often than not, each other. Bodies fall all over the place, but the film presents the deaths in such a routine one-two-three-kick manner, why should we care?
And anyone with even a passing familiarity with Ludlum's stuff could see the Big Giant Twist from a hundred miles away.....
Worst moment - Caine's climactic scene, which no doubt was meant as a dramatic powerhouse. But after all the preceding random carnage and duplicity, the scene comes off as ludicrous and laughable. It probably provoked snorts and snickers from anyone watching it.
Best moment - the film's principal villain pontificates on the abysmal state of the world as a justifiable motive. And given today's frightening, ominous current events, this 1985 dialogue feels like a prescient harbinger of our own chilling future.
Overall, fit only for hardcore Caine fans and Frankenheimer completists. For everyone else, a dreary waste of time.
1 star (*).
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