Dorathen Better Late Then Never

CommentsXp Best movie ever!

Plustown A lot of perfectly good film show their cards early, establish a unique premise and let the audience explore a topic at a leisurely pace, without much in terms of surprise. this film is not one of those films.

Ezmae Chang This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

rodrig58 Claude Chabrol was a very good director. And very prolific, 73 credits in 52 years, at least 1 feature film per year, sometimes even 2, 3 or 4. In the full James Bond fever, he made an attempt with this film. Result: something neither exciting, neither stupid, neither masterpiece. The script is poor and Roger Hanin(who also wrote the script) is not the best choice for a similar Bond role. The beautiful Daniela Bianchi is just a presence, she just smiles from time to time and shows her body. Somehow funny, Jimmy Karoubi, who plays the dwarf, and Dobrovsky's stupid secretary, played by Christa Lang. The whole thing, just a little waste of time.

Uriah43 This movie begins with the assassination of a Turkish agent who is involved in a possible deal involving the purchase of several Mirage IV jets from France. As it so happens, certain factions within the world have no intention of allowing this deal to proceed and so when Turkey sends a high-level diplomat with the last name of "Baskine" (Sauveur Sasporte) all efforts are made to kill him as well. To prevent this the French government assigns an agent by the name of "Louis Rapiereto" (Roger Hanin) to protect him and his wife "Madame Baskine" (Maria Mauban) along with their daughter "Mehlica Baskine" (Daniela Bianchi). But what the French government doesn't know is that two separate groups are involved in undermining this deal and that they both have different ideas on how to accomplish this task. Now rather than reveal any more I will just say that this was an okay "James Bond" clone which had a decent plot but tended to misfire when it came to some of the scenes involving humor. Likewise, I don't believe Daniela Bianchi was used to her fullest potential either. In any case, this turned out to be an adequate Eurospy film for the most part and I have rated it accordingly. Average.

gridoon2018 It's a good thing that Claude Chabrol only made two of these "Tiger" films in the mid-1960s, because it's clear that secret agent thrillers are just not his type. Chabrol doesn't hide his goals (there is even a shot of a "From Russia With Love" book with Sean Connery on the cover near the start), and he tries to give the film some quirks (killer dwarf!), but he can't really stage fight scenes, and he lets some sequences (driving, opera singing, pro-wrestling, etc.) play on and on purposelessly. Of course it doesn't help that Roger Hanin is one of the least charismatic spy leads of the period, more closely resembling George Lazenby in the way his judo chops are his strongest point. "From Russia With Love" Bond girl Daniela Bianchi is also here, but her role is strictly (and almost demeaningly) to look beautiful and get captured by the bad guys. She can't have more than 10 lines of dialogue in the entire picture. Oh, and not to sound biased or anything, but a black & white 1960s Eurospy movie is like a color 1940s film noir - it just doesn't feel right. I will give it credit for one novelty, however: the gun that fires backwards. I wonder if "The Silencers" with Matt Helm stole this idea from "Code Name: Tiger". *1/2 out of 4.

John Seal How's this for confusing? The indispensable Eurospy Guide indicates that this early Claude Chabrol feature originally ran 100 minutes, but was cut to an unbelievable 65 when it was released to the American market. IMDb lists it at 90 minutes. This review, however, is based on the 82 minute version available through Something Weird Video! Whichever running time is definitive, however, Code Name Tiger is a very entertaining entry in the genre, which generated scores of identikit features throughout the 1960s thanks to the success of the James Bond films. Chabrol acknowledges his debt to Bond by prominently featuring a French-language copy of From Russia to Love in one scene, and other fixtures of the meme--ranging from beautiful women (From Russia With Love's absolutely stunning Daniela Bianchi) to oddball villains (a midget in a bird cage)--pop up throughout the film. Chabrol also displays his talent with a camera, especially in the early going, when a chase scene is shot from overhead and an assassin comes to a sticky end in a bizarre flooded mansion. Starring the still active Roger Hanin as the titular secret agent, this is a prime candidate for DVD--assuming someone can find the full length version!