Billion Dollar Brain

Following on the last couple of weeks, I watched the third and final Harry Palmer movie:

Billion Dollar Brain (1967).

In this movie, Harry (Michael Caine) is tasked with infiltrating a mysterious organization that wants to overthrow communism. The trouble is, this might start WWIII. Harry goes to Finland, where he meets an old acquaintance Leo Newbigen (Karl Malden). Leo is well placed in the organization and recruits Harry. They also visit Riga and eventually Texas. Action, espionage and danger lurks around every corner. I'm avoiding spoilers again.

The very first thing I noticed is that the intro sequence has a very strong James Bond style. Caine was actually worried that he'd be trapped in the Palmer role like how his good friend Sean Connery was with Bond. I haven't read the book yet, but the movie's plot has a very strong Bond feel as well. In fact, the main villain is like a Bond villain if that villain had completely lost his mind. It is seriously a bonkers plan.

As a native Finn, it was seriously cool to see how my home town of Helsinki looked a decade before my birth. So similar and yet so very different. Harry walks past places where, as a kid I played, and visits locations I know very well. For some reason they chose to film certain scenes in Turku Castle, and considering Turku is 168 km west of Helsinki, that is a bit odd. There was nothing about the scenes that even required a castle...

When Harry visits Riga, they shot in the Finnish city of Porvoo, located some 50 km east of Helsinki. This is understandable since in the 60's Riga was actually in the Soviet Union and filming there would have been impossible. I just have no idea why they chose to pretend that Turku Castle was in Helsinki.

Overall, Billion Dollar Brain is an okay movie, the recurring characters are played by the original actors which is always nice. The other actors are good as usual, even veteran actor Ed Begley who chews the scenery so hard its a miracle he didn't lose his teeth in the process. I guess you have to do that if you're playing a fanatic with megalomania.

So, do I recommend this movie? Yes and no. If you want to complete the Harry Palmer trilogy or see what Finland looked like in '67, then sure. Billion Dollar Brain is not a bad movie, it is just not very good either. It was directed by a very unwilling Ken Russel and it shows. The balance is off, the plot is ridiculous, (though that may be the fault of the book), and I get the feeling the plot didn't even need Harry to begin with. Not great not bad, just kind of in the middle mediocre. I'm glad I watched it, but the two previous movies particularly Funeral in Berlin are so much better.

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

 

Funeral in Berlin

Continuing from last week, I watched:

Funeral in Berlin (1966).

Harry Palmer (Michael Caine) returns and this time he's sent to Berlin to vet KGB Colonel Stok (Oscar Homolka) who intends to defect to the west. Always a tricky situation, since he has to find out if the defection is genuine, and if it is, he needs to make it happen. In Berlin he connects with his old friend Johnny Vulkan (Paul Hubschmid). It was Vulkan Harry schemed with when he got arrested and sent to prison and then to the intelligence service. Soon enough he also meets the beautiful Samantha Steel (Eva Renzi), and the game becomes a great deal more difficult, not to mention dangerous.

Funeral in Berlin is directed by Guy Hamilton, who amongst many other movies has directed four James Bond films. In 1966 he had only directed Goldfinger, although Funeral in Berlin was his 13^th movie overall.

Where I found The Ipcress File to be good but flawed, Funeral in Berlin is a stone cold spy thriller. You can feel Hamilton's touch and it feels good. Palmer is essentially the same free-wheeling smart mouth he was in Ipcress, but he feels a bit harder and more cynical, though not in a bad way. The other actors are all solid, but apparently Eva Renzi was incredibly difficult to work with. She was rude to Caine and argued constantly with Hamilton, even telling him how to light her. This did no favors for her career, and although it was far from ruined she earned the title “difficult to work with” which can sink an actors career surprisingly fast.

As I'm writing this, I'm trying to remember the soundtrack, but I can't. I firmly blame the excellent story and the atmosphere that at tines is thick enough to cut with a knife. Even scenes that are apparently unimportant feel really tense. The Cold War paranoia really is omnipresent.

In order to avoid spoilers I won't mention any plot details beyond what I have already done, but I want to point out that at times the story is a bit hard to follow. It all makes sense in the end, but there are a lot of moving parts and unless you're really paying attention you might get a bit lost. This is the kind of critique I never know how to feel about. On the one hand, it is a good thing if the audience can follow the story without taking notes, but on the other hand I like a convoluted story that doesn't hold my hand and over explains everything. Suffice to say that Funeral in Berlin is somewhere in the middle I suppose.

So, do I recommend this movie? Absolutely! If you have any interest in spy thrillers Funeral in Berlin is a must watch. It has its flaws but overall it is an excellent movie that is well shot, well directed and a top shelf pick in its genre. They even shot scenes at the actual Check Point Charlie! How's that for realism?

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

 

The Ipcress File

Ever since I got into consuming spy media, I've been meaning to watch:

The Ipcress File (1965),

and last night I finally got around to doing so.

Based on the debut spy novel by Len Deighton, this British spy thriller is directed by Sidney J. Furie and stars Michael Caine, Nigel Green, Guy Doleman, Sue Lloyd, Gordon Jackson, Frank Gatliff and many more.

We meet Harry Palmer (Caine), an army sergeant who got into legal trouble in Germany but instead of prison was recruited by what I'm guessing is SIS (it isn't mentioned outright). He's a bit of a rogue, has a glib mouth and a tendency to do what he wants. Although this is the 60's so he's actually pretty polite by modern standards. I'm sure it was shocking back then.

An important scientist is kidnapped and it is up to Palmer's unit to find him. Since Palmer is, let's say unconventional, he gets results that quickly spiral out of control and everything heads towards a dramatic climax. That's as far as I can go without spoiling anything.

I'm not very used to 60's cinema, I generally prefer the 70's, but The Ipcress File is good. Low budget to be sure, but they did a lot with what they had. Being British, this isn't a roaring action movie, it's much more subtle than that. What I found interesting is that there isn't really much of a motivation for the bad guys, nothing overtly explained at least.

Michael Caine is brilliant as always, and the rest of the cast is good. Lots of familiar faces for those that watch older British TV and movies. The soundtrack is likewise nice and the cinematography is excellent. I keep saying it, but older movies were shot so much better than modern ones.

There are a couple of interesting facts about this movie I want to share:

The main character in the novel isn't named so Caine & Co had to come up with a name. The producer Harry Salzman and Caine agreed that Harry is a boring name and Caine went to school with a Tommy Palmer who was also apparently boring so the name Harry Palmer was born.

Harry wears glasses which was unusual for a tough guy back then, and he's also an accomplished cook. These two facts together made the movie hard to distribute in the US. It seemed distributors were worried the American audiences would think Harry was gay. For wearing glasses and cooking. Different era indeed, especially since Harry is a real skirt chaser.

The director and the producer fought constantly, to the point where Caine and Salzman had to jump in a Rolls-Royce to chase down a bus. Furie had stormed off and gotten on that bus, and they desperately needed him back.

So, do I recommend this movie? Oh yes! It is a bit dated but in a fun way. It's not quite up to the quality of Tinker Tailor, but what spy drama is? The Ipcress File does what it does with style, and I look forward to checking out the other movies in the Harry Palmer series.

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

 

Red Sparrow - again.

Back in June I talked about the (sort of) spy thriller Red Sparrow. I have now read the book and feel like doing a bit of a comparison.

To no one's surprise, the basic story is the same as the movie. There is a mole in the SVR, Dominika is trained to be a spy, lots of tradecraft, the CIA etc...

However there are lots of differences as well. Take Dominika's training for example. In the book she is fully trained at the SVR academy before she is sent to the sparrow school. The movie really exaggerates the sparrow element for obvious reasons, but it also cheapens Dominika's skills. There is also the fact that she has synesthesia, or the ability to see sound as color. This is why she was so good at dancing, and why she is a human lie detector. The book kind of wears off a bit, treating her condition as more or less aura reading which is a bit much but it is an interesting element, so I didn't mind.

In the movie, a lot of the action takes place in Budapest which is fine, but in the book Nate and Dominika duel in Helsinki which really amused me as I live there. The author, Jason Matthews really did a good job, and described many places accurately. However, I did get a good laugh when a couple of CIA agents are described as knowing the city like the back of their hands, having even mastered the metro... The Helsinki subway isn't like London, Paris or Moscow. The book was published in 2013 and our metro at the time looked like a fork. One long line and a short fork on one end. Not all that impressive to master that... But it was fun to see my hometown through the filter of a spy thriller. Dominika and Nate even eat at a restaurant that I have eaten at a dozen times, at least. In fact, I didn't even know the place still exists, so that was a fun bonus.

The book also deals with espionage within the US, with a highly placed mole, which the movie ignored completely. There are scenes taking place in Athens and Rome that are likewise ignored. I get that it would have ballooned the budget, and it's not like the movie had to have these elements but it would have elevated the movie a great deal.

In a surprising twist, I actually prefer the movie's ending to the one in the book. The novel has a more realistic ending, but I found the movie ending more satisfying.

All in all, the novel really paints a more complete picture of Dominika which makes some scenes in the movie make more sense. It is only natural that a book can go deeper into detail than a movie, but the movie really messed up in so many small ways that they could have fixed if they hadn't been so focused on doing other things instead. In the movie, Dominika has to fend off the lecherous advances of the Russian station chief in Helsinki. In the book, he is a scumbag but he does not dare hit on the niece of the Deputy Director. Things like that I wish the movie could have just handled better.

In conclusion, I really enjoyed Red Sparrow. Jason Matthews writes well and his long experience in the CIA really shows. He manages to create believable and tense surveillance scenarios without loosing the reader in tech-babble. If you like spy novels, read Red Sparrow, it is worth it.