First of all, the only reason this gets more than one star is that I like Robert Vaughn as an actor (even in dreck like "Superman III") and he did his best with a flabby premise and a limp-wristed execution of a stale script that Sean Connery himself couldn't have rescued.
There's a pretty nice opening credit scene with some swooping aerial footage that gave me some hope that this might have some good qualities to it...that hope was quickly dashed as an impassive scientist wandered into a computer cave and proceeded to watch 20 minutes of stock footage on a monitor. All this was obviously padding spliced together to extend the footage of some unfinished Vaughn movie (or one that was unwatchable or unreleasable on its own terms, possibly because it was too short.)
The screenplay then jumped between the feature film and unmoving shots of the impassive scientist watching the feature film for about 20 more minutes until the film editor ran out of bourbon and said the hell with it, and let us watch the rest of the "real" movie until just before the end. Then the padding took over and changed the entire premise and ending of the first movie with some clumsy narrative hand-waving.
SOmething of note: at one point, the film tries to go into a subplot about women prisoners in Nazi prison camps, complete with a butch dyke Elsa wanna be and the women breaking out and helping Vaughn by killing their captors. Sorry, just as poorly executed as the rest of the film, didn't help.
Als of note: at one point, Vaughn supposedly climbs into a tank and wreaks destruction on the Nazi camp. This is all done with exterior shots of the tank firing at things and blowing them up unconvincingly. At no point during the entire tank sequence do we ever see a closeup or reaction shot of Vaughn. (He was probably in his trailer downing double Jack and Cokes). That's the kind of movie this is, folks. Even the putative star could barely stand to be in it.
And then the movie just stopped (actually froze in mid-frame) and the credits rolled, and the audience (if there ever was one) burned down the theater and hunted down the producers and directors like dogs....
Sorry, a little fantasy there. I can't imagine this concoction ever being released to an actual theater, except as the 3rd item on a dusk-to-dawn drive-in triple feature.
Seriously, if your goal is to make a spy thriller, and you have Robert Vaughn and Aldo Ray and Keenan Wynn to work with, and you can't even make something as good as a lesser episode of "Man From Uncle"...and then you wrap the "feature" in a clumsy 25 minute collage of voice-over, exposition and unrelated stock footage that makes the movie even LESS watchable...well, suffice it to say that the producers and directors may have made the wrong career choice.If they'd just put two related episodes of "Man From Uncle" together and released THAT as a movie, the results would have been light years better.
I saw this as part of a public domain DVD collection, one of those "50 Movies for $15.00" deals, which means I paid less than 50 cents to see this, and I felt cheated. And I felt bad for the actors - even the lesser spear-carriers in this thing must have been dying inside as they tried to make the dialog and the action work.
There's a pretty nice opening credit scene with some swooping aerial footage that gave me some hope that this might have some good qualities to it...that hope was quickly dashed as an impassive scientist wandered into a computer cave and proceeded to watch 20 minutes of stock footage on a monitor. All this was obviously padding spliced together to extend the footage of some unfinished Vaughn movie (or one that was unwatchable or unreleasable on its own terms, possibly because it was too short.)
The screenplay then jumped between the feature film and unmoving shots of the impassive scientist watching the feature film for about 20 more minutes until the film editor ran out of bourbon and said the hell with it, and let us watch the rest of the "real" movie until just before the end. Then the padding took over and changed the entire premise and ending of the first movie with some clumsy narrative hand-waving.
SOmething of note: at one point, the film tries to go into a subplot about women prisoners in Nazi prison camps, complete with a butch dyke Elsa wanna be and the women breaking out and helping Vaughn by killing their captors. Sorry, just as poorly executed as the rest of the film, didn't help.
Als of note: at one point, Vaughn supposedly climbs into a tank and wreaks destruction on the Nazi camp. This is all done with exterior shots of the tank firing at things and blowing them up unconvincingly. At no point during the entire tank sequence do we ever see a closeup or reaction shot of Vaughn. (He was probably in his trailer downing double Jack and Cokes). That's the kind of movie this is, folks. Even the putative star could barely stand to be in it.
And then the movie just stopped (actually froze in mid-frame) and the credits rolled, and the audience (if there ever was one) burned down the theater and hunted down the producers and directors like dogs....
Sorry, a little fantasy there. I can't imagine this concoction ever being released to an actual theater, except as the 3rd item on a dusk-to-dawn drive-in triple feature.
Seriously, if your goal is to make a spy thriller, and you have Robert Vaughn and Aldo Ray and Keenan Wynn to work with, and you can't even make something as good as a lesser episode of "Man From Uncle"...and then you wrap the "feature" in a clumsy 25 minute collage of voice-over, exposition and unrelated stock footage that makes the movie even LESS watchable...well, suffice it to say that the producers and directors may have made the wrong career choice.If they'd just put two related episodes of "Man From Uncle" together and released THAT as a movie, the results would have been light years better.
I saw this as part of a public domain DVD collection, one of those "50 Movies for $15.00" deals, which means I paid less than 50 cents to see this, and I felt cheated. And I felt bad for the actors - even the lesser spear-carriers in this thing must have been dying inside as they tried to make the dialog and the action work.