GamerTab
That was an excellent one.
Micah Lloyd
Excellent characters with emotional depth. My wife, daughter and granddaughter all enjoyed it...and me, too! Very good movie! You won't be disappointed.
Rio Hayward
All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.
andrew muhling
We all know Freric Forsyth supposedly wrote great thrillers. Sadly I'm not sure this is the case in this instance. There were too many moments in the film where I wanted to say "what? that's never going to happen!!" Point in fact would be expecting everyone to believe that there was a nuclear accident in a housing estate.At 1.5kTon, it's only a small bomb. They say in the film the crater will only be "2 mile across" so investigators will rumble a rat strait up. Then assembling fissile material with out a containment or even protective clothing?? your kidding me right?Also the premise that an atom bomb will go off by mistake. Atom bombs are incredibly difficult to explode unless you get stuff to happen just right. So that is a plot fault for starters. Sheesh...I liked the ideas that all the agent managers were self serving prats, though Forsyth's portrayal of all the Russian characters as cold automatons is a bit dated, probably even by 1987 cold war standard. Michael Cain doing his best "Micheal Cain" is well worth a star or two though.A final thought... Mr Mackenzie, if you are going to show a woman with magnificent breasts topless, allow her to sit or stand in the shot. Large breasts prone do not do them selves any justice at all.a.
graestella
I hadn't seen this for ages. Then it was given away free with the Daily Mail.It really has aged well. The plot is still believable. Just substitute Islamic terrorists for Russian ones. Caine was brilliant and doing his 'laser' style acting in all the close ups. Something he doesn't bother with in his many pot boilers. I have to agree with some of the other posters. It really should have been promoted as Harry Palmer's midlife crisis. He would have developed just like this. The hero in the book reads like an ex-Para version of Freddie Forsythe. Caine makes the role his own and adds his own interpretation. Another of my favourites Pierce Brosnan acts his heart out too, as the stone killer Petrofsky. The Ian Richardson and Anton Rogers scene has to be a career best for both of them. Only a side plot but absolutely brilliant.
sol-
An adequate spy thriller of its type, the film has a number of predictable moments but a few well-filmed scenes too, such as the meticulous preparation of the bomb itself. The screenplay is generally sub-par and the characters are not developed any better than the story itself, plus the end is almost silly, not fitting in very well with everything else. Some have commented on Brosnan's performance in a positive way, and I suppose he does a reasonably good job. There is not much in this film that I would recommend it on myself though - it is okay to watch, but it does not really rise above the mark set by other similar films.
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
