Vashirdfel Simply A Masterpiece

Dynamixor The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

Bumpy Chip It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

Josephina Great story, amazing characters, superb action, enthralling cinematography. Yes, this is something I am glad I spent money on.

SnoopyStyle The Fourth Protocol in a nuclear treaty forbids unconventional nuclear weapons. Major Valeri Petrofsky (Pierce Brosnan) is assigned by KGB head General Govorshin to infiltrate the United Kingdom and set off a nuclear device next to an American base disguised as an American accident. Borisov (Ned Beatty) informs his friend General Karpov who starts looking into the secret operation. MI5 officer John Preston (Michael Caine) is a top British counter-espionage operator. His brash unorthodox methods rub the acting-Director Brian Harcourt-Smith wrong, and is relegated to airports and ports. He encounters the case of a dead courier delivering a nuclear device component.This is a second tier level espionage movie. Brosnan is good as a freezing cold spy and Caine is fine as the operative. It's a fine movie existing somewhere below the best of the genre. It doesn't have the gritty realism of the best murky spy mysteries. The limited action is fine but not good enough to be an exciting action thriller.

Tweekums When this film was made nobody suspected that the Soviet Union would no longer exist in five years time; they were still the bad guys of choice for spy thrillers. Here a Soviet agent; Major Valeri Petrofsky has been tasked with a mission which if successful could spell the end of the North Atlantic alliance: his mission is to assemble a small nuclear bomb inside the United Kingdom and detonate it next to a US airbase... with the intention that everybody will believe it was an accident involving weapons on the base. Against him there is John Preston, a British agent, who stumbles upon the plot when one of the people bringing in one of the bomb components is killed in an accident.While there are a few plot holes it is possible to suspend ones disbelief as this is a fine thriller with great performances from lead actors Michael Caine and Peirce Brosnon who play Preston and the ice cold Petrofsky respectively. The action keeps up throughout the film from the start when traitor Kim Philby is killed to the end where Preston struggles with Petrofsky to prevent him detonating the bomb. That first scene was a bit of a problem for me however as it involved the killing of a real person who was very much alive at the time of the film's release; I think it would have been better to have had a renamed fictionalised version of him. Having recently watch Michael Caine play a similar role in the 1965 thriller 'The Ipcress File' it is great seeing that he can still be believable in such a role twenty years later.

Al At this stage of his career Pierce Brosnan was only known to me for his part in Remington Steele which was a fairly light role.In fact James Bond is a fairly harmless character compared to the ruthless agent he plays in this film. The urgency of his acting is the feature of this film.Caine's character is engaging but fails to keep pace with Brosnan's Petrofsky.I watched this on cable television in my hotel and was guessing throughout what year it might be by the devices used and cars driven.Another chilling role was the authoritative Sir Nigel Irvine played by the late Ian Richardson who dresses down the gormless character Anton Rogers plays "a treat." As Richardson rates amongst my top 5 actors it was a very enjoyable part of the film for me.Out of interest John Hurt, Alan Bates, Humphrey Bogart and Edward Woodward would be the other four.

Theo Robertson Frederick Forsyth is one of the greatest thriller writers to have picked up a pen with THE DEVIL`S ALTERNATIVE probably his best book concerning Ukrainian dissidents , a hijacked supertanker , a Kremlin power struggle and a hero who`s a middle aged Scotsman . Sean Connery would have been perfect but many Forsyth novels probably wouldn`t make good movies since the plots are complex and there`s often a myriad of characters with long back stories , information overload on how the KGB operate etc . THE FOURTH PROTOCOL unlike THE DEVIL`S ALTERNATIVE has a fairly simplistic plot which makes it an ideal story to be adapated into a screenplay but there`s a drawback - The story is predictable !!!! MILD SPOILERS !!!! THE FOURTH PROTOCOL centres around a nasty Soviet plot to win the cold war by exploding an atomic bomb at an American base making it look like an accident caused by the Americans leading to unilateral nuclear disarmament and the break up of NATO leaving those dastardly commies to invade Europe . The plot had actually been used before in the James Bond movie OCTOPUSSY and in many ways this does feel like a mind bending spy movie with Harry Palmer ( Michael Caine ) taking on communist traitor James Bond ( Peirce Brosnan ) , bizarre to say the least but as strange as it seems it is somewhat compelling , even though the climax is very predictable with the good guy trying to stop the bad guy detonating the bomb There are a few problems with the screenplay though . We have several scenes that don`t really add anything to the plot like the scene where Caine`s character smacks a couple of skin heads . Very admirable though it adds nothing to either plot or character development since we know he`s already a good guy , no need to prove it . I also couldn`t help noticing a rather ridiculous scene where the baddie decides to cut the throat of a possible witness , wouldn`t this draw attention to himself ? Wouldn`t the victim`s blood splatter all over his clothes ? And why would the witness need to be killed ? It`s not like he`s going to run to police and say " I tried to get off with a man in the gents toilets and I saw him recieve a radio from an airline pilot . He must be a KGB agent or something " Like most Forsyth stories there`s a lot of characters ( Maybe too many ) and they`re played by familiar British character actors but few of them make an impact with the exception of Ian Richardson and Anton Rodgers who both appear in the best scene of the movie where an intelligence chief confronts a traitor . If you think acting is a doddle think how you`d react if a director said to you " Okay , you play a dogmatic patriot , you`d do anything to stop the world being over run by communist tyranny and you`ve done your level best to stop this happening . But then this character has found you out and worse he`s just told you that you`ve been helping these nasty evil reds all along " how would you play the scene ? Richardson and Rodgers are superb in this scene even if it doesn`t really have anything to do with the main plot A fairly good thriller even if it`s not tightly plotted and you know where it`s heading