Linkshoch Wonderful Movie

Claysaba Excellent, Without a doubt!!

Console best movie i've ever seen.

Merolliv I really wanted to like this movie. I feel terribly cynical trashing it, and that's why I'm giving it a middling 5. Actually, I'm giving it a 5 because there were some superb performances.

HotToastyRag Michael Caine reprises his role as Harry Palmer in Billion Dollar Brain, two years after The Ipcress File. He's drawn into a political scheme with his friend Karl Malden, but there's more to the plan that meets the eye. For one, Karl's girlfriend Francoise Dorleac is also having an affair with Michael, and she seems to have no qualms about her deception. For another, Michael finds a dead body in Karl's house. . .Sometimes I get a little confused during complicated plots, and I'll admit that Billion Dollar Brain did lose me a couple of times. However, I didn't really mind. To be honest, I was only watching the movie for the eye candy. If you have as much of a crush on Michael Caine as I do, you should definitely check this one—this movie—out. He's incredibly handsome, so it's no wonder Francoise couldn't help herself! DLM Warning: If you suffer from vertigo or dizzy spells, like my mom does, this movie might not your friend. There's one scene about halfway through with Michael Caine and Francoise Dorleac, and the camera is hand-held. Also, there's a scene twenty minutes later, after Ed Begley makes an impassioned speech, and the camera swirls and tilts. In other words, "Don't Look, Mom!"

Leofwine_draca BILLION DOLLAR BRAIN is the third in the Harry Palmer trilogy of spy movies and a far drop in quality from the excellent first in the series, THE IPCRESS FILE. The film feels very much like an inferior Bond movie which is odd given that the whole reason behind the series was to be an 'anti Bond' with a greater emphasis on seriousness and realism. The story sees Palmer come out of retirement to go after a mysterious megalomaniac bent on world domination, with the story set in an icy Finland for the most part.This was an early film in the career of director Ken Russell and his inexperience shows. Some of the staging is okay but the action feels oddly flat and lifeless and the actors struggle to make their characters interesting, Karl Malden a cast in point. Sure, the story does benefit from an entertaining and original choice of villain, but everything that happens feels clichéd and oddly muted, and the end result is merely average.

st-shot Former British Secret Service agent Harry Palmer (Michael Caine ) now a private investigator is given a package to deliver to a man in Helsinki. Palmer''s suspicions however get the best of him. He discovers that the package contains live virus and is intended by some ultra right wing Texan to help him destroy the Red machine beginning with the invasion of Latvia. In the era of the secret agent craze Caine's Palmer was the anti Bond more scruffy than polished, the plots more gritty than glamorous. In this the last of the series it flirts with the Bond formula and falls on its face. Palmer's rumpled incertitude partially works due to the first half of the films convoluted structure but when dealing with a powerful megalomaniac with weapons of mass destruction in the latter third it becomes strictly a job for 007.Billion Dollar Brain's biggest misstep however is Ken Russell's direction. The idiosyncratic director's penchant for outlandish composition and expressionistic caricature are ill suited for action and suspense and his montages and tempo are flat and murky most of the time, his acerbic wit evident on occasion but out of place much of the time as it veers in and out of spoof. Billion Dollar Brain isn't worth a nickel of your time.

jc-osms I haven't seen the intervening film "Funeral In Berlin" in the Michael Caine/Harry Palmer Len Deighton trilogy of mid-60's British spy-thrillers and so came to "Billion Dollar Brain" via "The Ipcress File" which I have seen and enjoyed. I was intrigued to learn that it was an early directorial outing for infant-terrible Ken Russell and it was certainly interesting to see what flair he could bring to a typical, almost mundane "Cold War" spy narrative.To be fair though, I found the whole movie pretty under-powering, not helped by a plot that seems to borrow more from the escapist world of James Bond than the workaday environs of Harry Palmer, I mean a deranged billionaire Commie-hating Southern US General with a private army and super computer planning to trigger a war by invading Latvia! I'm aware that Bond producer Cubby Broccoli was also producer on the Palmer films but believe he seriously got his wires crossed here, to the extent that we get a flashy Bond-type title sequence, tons and tons of expensive-looking military hardware (apart from the "cheap-as-chips" afore-mentioned super computer!) and a horde of extras who reach an icy end on the frozen wastes of Latvia.Contained in the over-prolix story are the usual devices of our man's anti-Establishment cussedness, cross and double-cross, love interest and the usual hero-saves-the-day conclusion, but in truth, rather like the snowy landscapes which proliferate in the background, I was left pretty cold and dreary by the film as a whole.Caine seems to show less conviction in his acting this time around and for me his style doesn't bond with Karl Malden's either, while Ed Begley goes over the top of Everest as the mad General Midwinter. Director Russell handles his locations well, gives us one or two interesting shots, like the initial scene where we get to see by torch-light the dishevelment of P.I. Harry's shambolic office and a scene where a just beaten-up Palmer comes around amongst a score of others like him, like so many broken dolls and yes, I did smile at the mild nudity scene which prefigures "Women In Love" by a few years.But as I said though, it takes a long time to get to the end, there's never really any sense of danger or suspense at any time and for me the actors all look confused throughout. Perhaps it's not surprising therefore that a fourth instalment wasn't commissioned after this outing.