Billion Dollar Brain

This is the third of the Harry Palmer spy stories which made Caine a big name star as a sympathetic crook turned into an expert secret agent. Nowadays, Harry forced into retirement and working as a private eye . Henry encounters himself privately recruited by the British Secret Agency and he's again hired by MI6 and colonel Ross (Guy Doleman, usual in the Palmer trilogy) . He must deliver a thermos flask containing some strange eggs to an American (Karl Malden) resident in Finland . Harry gets a little help from a gorgeous woman (Francois Dorleac sister to Catherine Deneuve and unfortunately deceased by car crash), but treachery is all around and he starts doubting on his partners. Meanwhile, a Texan millionaire (an overacting and blustering Ed Begley) prepares a military uprising in Estonia with the help of a billion dollar computer. His objective is the overthrowing communist by means of a coup de'Etat in Riga. Meantime, the Russian intelligence officer (a wickedly comical Oskar Homolka who appeared in 'Funeral in Berlin' as defector) in charge of Russian espionage tries to detain it.

Michael Caine as a deadpan , flabby anti-hero is phenomenal , he makes a delightful creation as the cockney secret agent, an immensely agreeable role . Packs solid scenes such as the final spectacular icebound highlights, among others . There appears uncredited Donald Sutherland as a scientist at computer . This exciting picture displays a James Bond style , in fact the producer is Harry Saltzman in charge of OO7 series production. Emotive musical score including sensitive leitmotif by Richard Rodney Barrett . Colorful cinematography reflecting splendidly the freezing outdoors by cameraman Billy Williams. The motion picture was well directed by Ken Rusell, who adds his peculiar style in some frames .

The best adaptation based upon the bestseller by Len Deighton is ¨Ipcress file (1965)¨ by Sidney J Furie with Gordon Jackson, Sue Lloyd, Nigel Greene, Guy Doleman , it's followed by ¨Funeral in Berlin¨ (1966) by Guy Hamilton with Oscar Homolka, Eva Renzi, Guy Doleman, "Billion Dollar Brain" by Ken Russell with Karl Malden, Oscar Homlka, Ed Begley. And continuing the series with inferior renditions for TV, titled ¨Bullet to Beijing (95)¨ by George Mihalka with Mia Sara, Jason Connery, Sue Lloyd Patrick Allen and ¨Midnight in Saint Petesburg(97)¨ by Douglas Jackson with Michael Gambon, Vlastra Vrana, Jadon Connery.

Former MI5 Harry Palmer (Michael Caine) is now a private detective. He gets a phone call from a computer voice directing him to a package in an airport locker. He's told to go to Helsinki where he gives the thermos to Anya (Françoise Dorléac) and his old friend Leo Newbigen (Karl Malden). He is soon suspicious of Leo and his mysterious boss. He is coerced to work for MI5 Colonel Ross (Guy Doleman) who tells him that the thermos is filled with a deadly virus and the conspiracy is headed by an oil tycoon General Midwinter (Ed Begley).

This spy thriller isn't serious or realistic. It's basically a lower grade espionage movie with a convoluted premise. It does jump around a little with out-of-the-way locales, virus, beauties and Russians. Director Ken Russell made a competent but somewhat unimpressive movie. It's a low tension mystery rather than a high power thriller. Then the movie turns into a spoof with the cartoon villain. Its craziness is just enough fun to be interesting.

Michael Caine's first Harry Palmer film, "The Ipcress File", seems to have been deliberately designed to present a quite different picture of life in the British Secret Service to that shown in the James Bond films. Whereas Bond is a glamorous figure who lives a life of luxury, travels to exotic locations, drives expensive cars and seduces a succession of glamorous women, Palmer earns an average wage, lives in a seedy and down-market flat, shops at his local supermarket, drives a Ford Zephyr rather than an Aston Martin and never travels outside London where he is mostly employed in dull, bureaucratic work.

I have never seen the second Palmer film, "Funeral in Berlin", but the third, "Billion Dollar Brain", is much closer to the Bond-type spy movie than is "The Ipcress File". Palmer travels to exotic foreign destinations (Finland and Latvia) and meets (and beds) a beautiful young woman who might just be a double agent. (The girl, Anya, was played by Francoise Dorleac in her last film before her tragic death). The most Bond-like element in the film is the villain, General Midwinter, a Texan oil millionaire who, with his grandiose schemes and his own private army, bears a close resemblance to some of Ian Fleming's characters such as Goldfinger or Stromberg.

When the film begins, Palmer has left MI5 and is working as a freelance private investigator. An apparently routine commission to deliver a mysterious package to Helsinki leads to his becoming embroiled with Midwinter, a far-right fanatic who dreams of overthrowing world Communism and has formed his own Crusade for Freedom, controlled by a powerful computer, the "Brain" of the title. (In 1967 it presumably looked very state-of-the-art, but today, with its reel-to-reel tapes and punch cards, it looks ludicrously dated. Strange to think that his billion dollars probably purchased Midwinter something with rather less calculating power than today's £500 laptops). The Brain has calculated (on the basis of false information fed in by a corrupt agent who has been syphoning off Midwinter's funds) that an anti-Soviet uprising is about to occur in Latvia, and Midwinter is resolved to send his private army to intervene.

Some people have seen parallels with George W Bush, but in 1967 there was another Texan in the White House, a man who had led America into a war even bloodier and even less popular than Iraq, and the character of Midwinter was doubtless intended to reflect the view that President Johnson was a dangerous warmonger. As, by implication, were those Americans who had been stupid enough to put him into the White House. (In the 1960s the European Left made little distinction between Republicans and Democrats, who were seen as two sides of the same coin). The hero of the film, apart from Palmer, is the Soviet commander Colonel Stok, desperately trying to prevent Midwinter from setting off World War III. Stok is played by Oskar Homolka who was presumably cast because of his strong resemblance to the then Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev.

This world view- Americans are mad and bad, the Soviets are decent and civilised, and anyone who opposes Communism or Russian domination of Eastern Europe must be a Neo-Nazi- was an unusual one to find in a Cold War thriller, but it was one that was fairly common in left-wing circles in Europe during the sixties, even though the Soviets had plenty of self-righteous lunatics of their own, many of them in positions of high authority. Replace the word "Communism" in Midwinter's speeches with "Capitalism" and he begins to sound like Brezhnev's ranting, shoe-banging predecessor Nikita Khrushchev. Any hopes that Brezhnev would prove to be more liberal, however, were to be dashed the year after the film was made when he ordered the Red Army to crush the pro-democracy movement in Czechoslovakia. This sort of pro-Soviet viewpoint looks very outdated today, discredited by the events of the late eighties and early nineties when the peoples of Eastern Europe proved that they did indeed prefer democracy to the Communist system. We can be thankful that at the time of these events the Soviet Union was led by the only real statesman it ever produced, Mikhail Gorbachev. Had the likes of Brezhnev and Stok still been in charge they would have turned half a continent into a bloodbath in an attempt to maintain Soviet power by force of arms.

The film was directed by Ken Russell, not a name normally associated with spy movies. This was, however, only his second feature film (in the sixties he was much better known for his work on television) and he apparently made it reluctantly, being obliged to do so for contractual reasons. It is, however, obvious that he already had ambitions to be more than the director of run-of-the-mill thrillers, because his style already shows the hallmarks of the auteur director he was to become in the following decade- unusual camera angles especially on close-ups, shots using a moving camera, moody, atmospheric photography of the wintry, snow-bound Finnish landscape. The battle on the ice is a direct Eisenstein reference. This makes the film quite attractive visually, and some of the acting is good. Caine is too downbeat- he clearly failed to realise that this style of film called for a different style of acting from "The Ipcress File"- but Karl Malden is good as the cynical, amoral Leo Newbigen, and Ed Begley makes the best Bond villain not actually found in a Bond movie. Nevertheless, the film must lose at least one star for its objectionable politics. 5/10

Definitely an odd film, it is best to take it as a parody of the spy-film genre: as such it is enjoyable. Michael Caine is mostly sort of half bemused and half confused as the hapless Harry Palmer whose job is drawing him deeper into insanity and mayhem. And implausibility. The culminating scene is, well, pure symphony of the best (read:trash) special effects of the day. The plot is full of twists and double-crosses, and includes a Texan bent on taking over the world (how very now).

If you are Finnish, or have visited Finland, the experience is either heightened or or lowered: Billion Dollar Brain is one of the films where Finland stands as a location-double for the unaccessible Soviet Union. It is hard to concentrate on the plot, when first Helsinki is playing Helsinki, then Porvoo is in Russia, and Riga is again in Helsinki. The border is seemingly in Hameenlinna. One ends up wondering how Harry does not realize his train is going merely back and forth. Location-spotting can keep you amused as well, though.

When ex-agent Harry Palmer recieves a mysterious request to deliver a flask to Finland in return for a fee, Col. Ross forcibly re-employs him with British Intelligence. Palmer is ordered to proceed to Finland with the flask (which contains deadly nerve gas), in an attempt to infiltrate the organisation of Texan oil billionaire Gen. Midwinter, who is believed to be behind an anti-Soviet plot of some kind.

The third and final of the Harry Palmer films (if you don't count the two woeful straight to cable efforts of the mid-nineties) is generally considered to be the weakest. The strength of both 'The Ipcress File' and 'Funeral In Berlin' was that they were the complete antithesis of the Bond films, portraying the spying game as mundane, shadowy and unglamorous. However, with 'Billion Dollar Brain' maverick director Ken Russell presents the audience with an outlandish plot and large futuristic sets, which seem at odds with the style of its predecessors. The result is that the film appears to be aping Bond, and as such the character of Palmer is less effective.

Despite these shortcomings there are pleasures to be had. Michael Caine once again displays wit and charm as Palmer, Guy Doleman is his usual droll self as Ross and Oskar Homolka makes a very welcome return as Col. Stok. Ed Begley gives his all as the lunatic Midwinter, Karl Malden provides reliable support as an old aquaintence of Palmer, and the tragic Francois Dorleac lends an exotic mystery to her character. The snowbound Finnish locations are beautifully filmed and the production design by Bond man Syd Cain is very stylish.

Ultimately the film is let down by rather wild and undisciplined direction and a cartoonish finale. It's a shame that 'Billion Dollar Brain' strayed so far from the template of the previous films, but its by no means all bad, and can be reasonably entertaining if you're in the right mood.