Michael Caine as a German-American? Gimme a break! This whole project is so desperately flawed that even Lilli Palmer cannot save it, though her performance as Caine's mother is the best in the film. You know something is wrong when you see the opening credits: there are just too many screenwriters, and even Edward Anhalt is in there. How many rewrites can a succession of people do to save a doomed script? Clearly not enough. This is an excellent yarn, taken from a Robert Ludlum book which must have been a gripping story. But what a mess they have made of it. John Frankenheimer was an excellent director who was what one could call 'uneven'. In other words, he did not always deliver an acceptable result, and here he fails. He tries and tries, but it is no use. Anthony Andrews gives a better than expected performance, manages to avoid being arch, and with his blonde appearance convinces us that he is a German with an Iron Cross for a heart. Victoria Tennant, such an under-valued actress, does a fine job. Michael Lonsdale is wholly convincing as a quietly dominant Swiss banker who never needs to raise his voice because money speaks for him. It all could have been so good, but when you decide to cast a London cockney as an American architect whose father was a Nazi general, well please ... Michael Caine has never been anything other than Michael Caine. You could call that being true to himself or you could call it lack of talent. Certainly when he is called upon in this film to cry, you know it is glycerine drops, and the idea of a barrow boy crying, come on. The trouble was that in the 1970s Michael Caine was the only 'bankable' British star, which certainly gave too much power to his agent, Dennis Sellinger. And I guess this carried over into the eighties. But by then he was a shadow of the chirpy cricket of the East End that rode the wave of the revolution in class consciousness right to the top. Talk about perfect timing, Caine became the icon of a social movement. But somebody forgot to tell him how to act. Later in life, Caine finally picked up the skills along the way, and dozens of movies were his RADA, so he ended up a good actor in the end. But this was 1985, when he was still hopeless at being anyone but the same Michael Caine we saw last time, and the time before, and the time before. And that is a bore. Yes, tis a pity.
Review of The Holcroft Covenant
