The Fourth Protocol

 Since I was in the mood for a Cold War spy thriller I had a look around and found The Fourth Protocol (1987) starring the great Michael Caine and started to watch.

This was literally all I knew about it, so imagine my surprise and delight when the following names scrolled across the screen: Pierce Brosnan, Ned Beatty, Julian Glover, Michael Gough and Ian Richardson. There are of course many more but this is already a great cast. To top it off, the screenplay and the novel it's based on is written by Frederick Forsyth. We are in star country folks!

The Fourth Protocol itself is a fictitious part of the 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty that states that all nukes must be delivered either by missile or bomber. They can't just be hidden somewhere and detonated.

Mild Spoilers ahead.

Alright, so Caine plays John Preston, a free wheeling MI5 officer who despite his attitude gets results. He is on the outs with his boss, acting director Brian Harcourt-Smith (Glover) but the director of MI6, Sir Nigel (Richardson) likes him, so when Preston discovers a plot to smuggle an atomic bomb into Britain in pieces, his boss suspends him and Sir Nigel helps him.

On the other side of the plot is Brosnan as KGB Major Petrovsky, whose job it is to do the bomb bit. In fun twist, all but one of the Soviet generals are played by Americans. Usually when an American movie needs a Russian or two they employ a Brit, so the reverse was fun.

Despite the great cast and the general quality of the film itself, it has a couple of problems. First off, it is too long for how it uses the time. Clocking in at 1h52 it is a bit of a slog particularly since there are so many scenes that are superfluous. Most of the bomb parts are delivered to Brosnan without any complications. He just meets the contact, grabs the item and drives off on his motorcycle. Why bother with scene after scene like this when it leads nowhere? Put some excitement in it, please. The second problem is the nuke. Plot wise it is necessary but you know from the very beginning that it's not going to explode, and you are right. Something less over the top would have added a realistic fear of failure.

Michael Caine was an associate producer besides being the main star, and he said that quote: "We wound up with a wordy action movie which, although it was quite a good picture, and did fair business, never had the speed and pace of the best American action movies. So for long sequences in the film, we not only had a talking picture, but a lot of talk, and even worse, most of it unintelligible. I went there as the star and associate producer, and one might have thought this would give me sufficient authority to put my own strongly-held opinions into practice, but no chance. Even I, in my exalted position, wound up making a talking picture, when it should have been a moving one."

He's not wrong. The action is too poor to call it an action-thriller and the talky bits are too weak for a pure spy thriller like Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. What we get is a weird hybrid creature that for all it's faults is still pretty damn good.

Do I recommend this movie? Yes. It is more of a lazy Sunday afternoon movie than a must-watch, but it is never the less worth watching. It could have been better but what we get is at least good enough. Besides, all the scenes that takes place in Russia are filmed in Finland so that is a bonus point for me.

That's that an all that. Join me again next time and until then, have a great and safe week!