Reviews

This is an entertaining spy film, ony marred by the need to display British officers --pointedly, British Intelligence officers-- as dumb. These fictional Brits need to make unforgivable mistakes in order to allow the bad guy escape and escape again, and thus stretch the plot.

Then, the hero should have died twice, but he is the hero, so he won't. The bad guys also waste their chances of finishing him; they are almost as dumb as the British. As in Austin Powers films, instead of killing their enemy right away, the bad guys delay pressing the trigger.

However, one must admire Follet's ability to depict the ways in which the good guys slowly tie the noose around the villain; how they do intelligence.

To me, the worst instance of stretching the story is near the end, when Robertson's character puts a bullet on Wolf... but only one, so the German Spy manages to grab his son and threatens him again.

Nevertheless, as I said, the story is watchable.

Perhaps more irritating than those paid high-rated reviews are those guys sent to defame a film. In this thread, viewers which rated 1 to 3 show a common element: abscense of foundations for their opinions, which make them so suspicious. Or maybe the critics are sincere, but people have mentally declined so much that we don't understand (or enjoy) a film unless it abounds on blood and (very expensive) action and special effects.

Complainers say acting was horrible without even mentioning seasoned and well-tested actors like Mary McCormack and Richard Schiff; (apparently some viewers think that just saying "bad" is enough to make something bad). Just watch the film and see what was so bad with the acting; I could not find it. Being enthusiastic, a more discerning viewer observed that "The two main actors in this movie give a much better performance than 99% of the actors you see in a big budget sci fi, but neither of them is really 'good looking', so this is all they get."

Many 1-to-3-raters protest that the movie screams "low budget", not realizing that the story does not need any high budget.

Disgruntled viewers claim that the screenplay was insipid, while in truth they should have said that they did not understand it. Some proclaim their own limitations: "There is basically too much talking and philosophising which gets confusing and boring"; "(the film) needed some space battles or something..."; "unintelligible dark plot lines that end in predictable nihilistic philosophical jumbles".

To be honest, the final hero-extraterrestrial dialogue is a little too philosophical, but that is somehow inevitable. On films dealing with time, the ending usually is confusing and implies a contradiction; very few time travel stories succeed in avoiding incongruencies. In Alien Code the situation is somehow worse than having a time loop, parallel times or time travel. Here we have NO time at all. Humans entered in contact with beings which perceive everything happening at the same time: timeless creatures.

And the end has to be nihilistic: If everything already happened at the same time, there is nothing we could do. For those who did not watch it, the plot resumes in two questions: "What if time weren't always linear?" and "you've done something wrong. If you could go back in time would you change what you did" (The film's answer to the first question is "yes, for some ETs isn't linear", and to the second is the nihilistic "it is not possible to change anything".)

As almost always in the Hollywood conspiratorial world, the behaviour of the powerful bad guys is ominous (except perhaps the ever silent MIB, who were intended as menacing but came across as cartoonish, cliched and comical). What is not properly explained here is why the government, the military or the dark corporation are doing what they do. They believe they are building a doomsday weapon? In the end the hero realizes it is not a gun, so why the bad guys could not realize it as well? Why the extraterrestrials weren't clear about it in their documents?

Though I find this film very very good, some may disagree with the last part. The ending felt rushed, not explained enough. While the movie introduced several complex concepts, none of them received a shockingly novel treatment. The "baldies" were excellent characters for a suspense movie, but they were not given enough screen time, or a purpose.

But these are minor flaws. Generally speaking, this is FAR better than the rating it has received.

Let's begin by stipulating that there is a germ of reality in all the madness this story narrates. Let's say that this film is not 100% a figment of the milketoasty main character's imagination.

Now spoilers begin so stop reading if you wish to be surprised later.

(1) The film begins with timid and ineffectual Bob (Slater), who is a little coo-coo: he believes is having conversations with his pet fish. Bob is despised or ignored at work so he brought a revolver to the office with the plan of killing five of his coworkers and later shooting himself, but he never gathers courage enough to go with it.

While in his cubicle, Bob grabs and loads his gun, but one round falls to the floor. Up to here we may say this was "Real" within the film.

(2) But the movie continues. Another coworker had the same idea as Bob, so while Bob is fishing the fallen bullet the other guy kills five clerks. To some extent by accident, Bob kills the killer so he becomes a hero to everybody.

(3) In the shootout, beautiful chairman's assistant Vanessa (Cuthbert) is shot and becomes quadraplegic. The chairman of the company (Macy) gives Bob an envelop destined for Vanessa. After a failed attempt of helping Vanessa commit suicide, Bob begins a romance with her. All collapses for Bob when it becomes evident that Vanessa was the chairman's mistress and when she confesses herself to be uncapable of loving anybody, including Bob. Moments later Bob's mind crumbles completely when he opens the envelope his boss had given him, where he finds a photo where Vanessa is confessing her love for the chairman.

(4) Now back to "reality". Now Bob goes to, or appears at, the office, holding the gun. Vanessa is standing next to a watercooler so evidently she was never injured at all nor she had any relationship with Bob. (Most or all of paras 2 and 3 then never happened). While ogling her, Bob receives a fatal shot from his coworker. (So the other gun was also "real", we conclude, and maybe the other guy was later regarded as a hero because he stopped Bob who, after all, was holding a loaded firearm in the offices. Irony of ironies). The film ends here anyway.

Now if Vanessa was never injured the boss never gave him any envelope to Bob, so the photo that shocked Bob into madness did not exist. In order to make this film work we need to accept that most of it was imaginary, including the envelope. (I don't know about others but I hate films consisting of a character's imagination, or dreams.) What triggered Bob's collapse, then?

The film is not funny either, but rather quite depressing.

Several times during the film, both in rooms and in streets, the hero protects himself from a gazillion machine gun bursts crouching behind a wooden (probably plywood) counter, behind the door of a non-armored car and worse, behind a stretcher.

And no matter how many bullets are thrown to him, he is always peachy. Not one hits him.

The way the Big Bad Guy behaves and dies in the end is ridiculous.

In addition to those weaknesses there is the implausibility of the whole plot: the bad guys want to kill the president, so instead of hiring (and handsomely paying) a reliable sharpshooter, or finding a fanatic who could do the job out of hatred to the President, the bad guys force a guy by taking his wife and child as hostages. What could go wrong?) Yet, apart from those shortcomings, the film es decently directed and decently acted by everybody. As pure mindless entertanment, it fits the bill.

OK. The soviets had at least seven agents infiltrated in the US. Those agents were trained by a character called Cassius (which is a name given by US intelligence but, nevertheless, for some reason the Russians used it as well). Not very logical.

Soon enough we learn that US spy Shepherdson (Gere) IS really Russian agent Cassius, but the US intelligence does not know that. What they know (or they believe) is that Shepherdson is hunting down Cassius and killing the Russian assassins he trained. That is simply not possible if Cassius was a Russian agent.

One of those Russian assassins is interviewed in an American prison, and he says that he was trained by Cassius. Yet, while this is being said Cassius (Gere) is in front of him but the inmate does not recognize him. Not logical indeed.

Later on we learn that though Cassius was a Russian assasin who first killed Americans for the USSSR, at some point a Russian assassin killed, for some unexplicable reason, Cassius' family, and that turned Gere around so he started killing the assassins he first trained. The Russians apparently did not notice that, while the Americans did not notice that they were hiring a Russian spy to kill Russian spies (which, by the way, is something you don't do if you are a sensible Intelligence director: you capture foreign spies alive, pump them for information and, if it makes sense, turn them around).

Cassius is a master teacher of spies/assassins, yet he is repeatedly unable to shoot straight at short distance.

Near the end, as a Christmas surprise, we learn that the senator killed at the beginning was murdered not by Cassius, but by the apparently innocent Russian dormant agent Geary (Grace). Wow, I am impressed by the twist. First time in history Hollywood added a final twist just to shock (unthinking) viewers.

Geary(Grace) was a dormant Russian agent, yet Moscow, who should have known who Cassius was (after all, Cassius began as a Russian teacher of Russian assassins) failed to provide Geary with all the information they had about Cassius. So Geary had to deduce on his own who Cassius was. Cassius was killing Russian agents, yet Moscow did not order Geary to hunt and kill Cassius.

For the sake of complicationg the plot, the level of absurdity of this film breaks all barriers. Nothing makes sense.

I wish the name of NASA (a very serious and commendable institution) would not have been dragged into this. I also find the escape of a crop duster from two armed choppers a little too hollywoodean. Apart from that, I have nothing else to criticize this film.

Capricorn One is highly entertaining and suspenseful. Though I have no doubts we went to the moon I enjoyed the idea of the Bad Government trying to fool the citizens. It is silly but it makes for great fantasy.

Every actor (even the despicable OJ Simpson) is right on the mark, and dialogues are sprightly and intelligent. The music is adequately energetic and inspired.

This production deserved a much better rating, in my view.

Bad casting: Lizabeth Scott seemed not to be a good actress, and certainly she was not attractive enough to have three men crazy about her. Her character was not a femme fatale but just a nice poor girl who made bad choices. It is not understandable how a guy married to stunning Jane Wyatt could fall for Scott and mess up his own life.

Raymond Burr was the best on the film, slimy and threatening enough. Byron Barr was perhaps the worst, though his role was minimal.

The plot was a little contrived, in particular on how easily could Burr convince Barr of the existence of an affair between Powell and Scott. And how uncapable was Scott, just by talking, as normal people do, to set Barr straight and prevent him from trying to kill Powell.

The ending is not totally satisfaying either.

All in all, is a watchable movie, perhaps not quite a full fledged film noir, but suspenseful enough.

Many films abuse of the music, but this one, with no music at all, sounds odd. The silence accentuates how slow this film is.

My main complain is that the makers had no idea (or didn't care) about what the criminal law should say about a situation like this. Myla can go to the police and claim that Bob acted in self defense until getting a sorethroat, but the law should decide otherwise. Unless she went and told a tall tale, what we watch in the screen is, at least, manslaughter cmmitted by Bob.

Let's see: Bob (a nobody) imposes himself uninvited to the victim's apartment. He is asked to leave but he refuses, gets increasingly agitated and finally throws a punch to the man of the house, an older man. If self defense was there, the publisher was the one defending himself, not the other way around. What irritates me is that such travesty of the law could have been avoided easily just by portraying the publisher as a furious, violent bully who launched the first punch and forced Bob to defend himself (and even Myla).

"Sleuth" is one of those films where two characters talk and the dialogue is so intelligent that suspense grows logically up to an extraordinary outcome. Well, this film perhaps wanted to be an imitation of Sleuth but is not it; not by a long stretch. In The Caller the female character overacts histerically and yells for no reason, while the male behaves ridiculously most of the time, pretending to be sophisticated or exotic. Both fail miserably. After a few minutes we still don't know what could be the point of all that arguing and yelling, but we surely could appreciate that the dialogue is utterly artificial. Real people do not behave like them.

Then it comes (out of the blue) the utterly utterly ridiculous sci-fi ending. The makers could have decided that one or both characters were in fact vampires, or zombies, or patients in an expensive madhouse, or it was all just a dream. It wouldn't matter: only far better screenwriting could have saved this monstrosity of a film but regrettably, the necessary talent wasn't there. Two hours wasted and viewers were insulted by the makers.

The film is moderately entertaining and very civilized. Typical British elegance and sobriety is displayed constantly, with fluid acceptable dialogue and multidimensional characters.

I could rate a six or seven to this movie, were not for the ending. The final surprise comes at a high cost: it makes the story somehow absurd. Quite early on in the film we are made aware that Prof Turganev is a Russian spy infiltrated into the UK to learn and transmit British scientific-military secrets. So far so good. Up to that point this movie prefigured the 1973 Henri Verneuil's spy yarn The Serpent, where Col. Vlasov (Yul Brinner) is infiltrated more or less the same way into the US.

But there similarity ends, because at the last moment, in a final dialogue between Turganev and the MI5 supervisor, we are let to know that Prof. Turganev was in fact an MI5 mole infiltrated in the network of Russian spies; that MI5 allowed the Russians to infiltrate Prof Turganev as a spy because he was all the time a double agent at the service of MI5.

Let's examine this farfetched and problematic idea: For what purpose did MI5 do all that? Usually the aim of the intelligence services is to uncover any net of enemy spies already infiltrated into the host country. But Turganev, ostensibly a Russian spy, was necessarily informed by Moscow who his contact in the UK was going to be (here it was the evil Sheriff of Nottingham), so if Turganev knew, MI5 knew that immediately afterwards. Knowing that neighbour Mr Skelton was the contact spy, now the reasonable aim of MI5 should be to learn who were Skelton's contacts up the chain of spies, to dismantle the whole net. Did MI5 discover anything of that? Not at all. Once MI5 knew Skelton was a Russian agent he should have been discretely followed until his own contacts were discovered. We see nothing of the sort in this film.

Instead, MI5 let the network operate without any interference until circumstances (Prof. Leila's life was at risk) forced them to act. Skelton and his house servants were captured, but nobody else.

There is another unexplicable turn in the plot: Turganev is allowed to "escape" to Russia instead of keeping him, a valuable scientist, working for the British. You may send your ordinary agents back again, but you should protect those scientists who could produce advances in your favour.

A second MI5 objective may have been accomplished: to transmit to the Russians wrong technical information on what the British were doing or achieving. But I wonder how long could Turganev send garbage to Moscow before becoming under suspicion himself.

Viewers are unfair in their criticisms of a film which, in my opinion, should have been shown in theaters. For example, watch how agent Nicholas is introduced. The writing there is superb. The man is really anal retentive; a robot, as Sarah points out. Later he melds into an attractive human being, and finally turns again and becomes a despicable eel. Equally convincing at all times: a great performance by Mr. Bakula.

Think of the main twist, twenty minutes before the end: it is shocking; those claiming they saw it coming are lying. Even in the final scene, the outcome of the dialogue with the ex husband is not obvious, because Sarah's situation had been taken to such an extreme of despair that a sad ending seemed to be the only reasonable conclusion.

All dialogues are very well written. And they are convincing: that is why the final twist is unpredictable. Experienced Dan Gordon, someone who knows how to write, was behind this.

In addition to Mr. Bakula, acting is impeccable by every other character; nothing wrong to say there either.

If we are going to be stuffy and look for any flaw, perhaps we may say the attempts on Sarah's life were too elaborate; unnecessarily complicated and prone to failure, to the point of being hard to believe. But they add to the general impression the makers so aptly managed to convey: this is not, after all, Italian neorrealism; it is a suspense film, a genre where "larger than life" is almost customary.

If someone thinks this is not a swell film my advice is: now that you know the ending, watch it again and tell us where the falsity can be noticed. I bet that even with the advantage of hindsight a fair viewer should admit that the product is flawless.

A romantic comedy should consist of an attractive plot and include meaningful, elegant, sparky or powerful dialogue (say, Butterflies are Free, Two for the Road, The Swan, Sabrina First and 2nd versions...). Nothing of that sort is here. Viewers probably wondered when something engaging would happen. In vain: it never happens anything of interest (apart from the characters dying, good for them.) Dialogues are rutinary, with not a moment of REAL tension.

Ian is given a second chance to realize how wonderful Samantha is. Why Samantha is not given a second chance as well (and on and on, again and again)? In any case, Samantha is not wonderful; she alternates silly giggling with lacrimogenic abismal tragedy; she shows very little else in between, except when she is irritatingly stupid: by mistake she interrupts Ian's crucial meeting at work but, instead of silently going away she babbles and babbles and, after a second, idiotically she babbles some more. An embarrassing, painful moment.

The three main characters overact in the recurrent melodramatic scenes. In spite of a constant parade of extreme grimaces and Greek tragedy, the film fails to elicit any real emotion from viewers. Only those addicted to Hallmark pulps and films, and soap operas --or Ms Hewitt's family and friends-- would rate this mess over four stars.

Samantha is supposed to be a violinist, yet she has NO idea how to pretend playing a violin. Watch "Intermezzo" to see how a true actor --Leslie Howard-- could really imitate the playing of a violin.

Sam is a classical musician, but the piece she composes and sings at the end is a cheap uninspired pop song, as forgettable as this movie.

Ian takes a sheet (just melody and lyrics) of a song Sam wrote; he makes 75 identical copies and distribute them to the members of the orchestra. To make the movie, that very same song was written, arranged, harmonized and orchestrated by professional musicians. So the makers of this film knew those steps were required before a piece is played, but it seems they assumed that viewers are so ignorant as to believe that every musician in an orchestra reads the same part, no matter what instrument is playing. Hilarious.

Tom Wilkinson comes across as a nasty, implacable, fellow more than as a wise benevolent spirit. What is the point of his behaviour? The male hero really does not redeem himself in the second chance he receives, and even if he does, is him who dies, not the girl. So, again: what is the moral? In the end, Ian knows a taxi would be fatal. Yet, he allows Sam to take one and he obediently climbs and dies. Telling her "whatever we do, we cannot get into a taxi today" would be out of the question, according to the logic of the makers of this disaster.

It is evident that T. A. T is one of those cute films which elicit sympathy and enthusiasm beyond reasoning. Most reviewers relinquish their critical faculties to join the crowd of undiscriminating admirors, but the film suffers from plot holes that would not remain unnoticed should it be less charming.

Half of the film's logical craters derive from the fact that the hero (McDowell) possesses a perfectly controllable machine which allows him to go back and forth in time any way he wants, as much as he wants and as many times as he wants. Carried to its logical consequences, this all-powerful machine would make Wells invincible. He could go back in time as much as he needed and land at any moment when he could be certain to stop the Ripper (Warner). Even if he fails, he could always try again and again until he succeeds. Such repeated looping in time might make for an interesting and different argument: for example, imagine that Ms. Robbins (Steenburgen) is in fact murdered by the Ripper; at the last moment Wells goes back in time and saves her. Cool enough to me, but screenwriter Meyer missed that or decided against it.

To avoid the paralyzing consequences of having an omnipotent machine, the writer should have incorporated limitations (the kryptonite") to the times or conditions to jump in time. In the movie the machine has no limitations, but (the fictionally dumb) Wells is unable to grasp the possibilities he has at hand and thus suffers unnecessary anguish.

With a little more care other outrageous inconsistencies could have been avoided (or explained away). Such as:

What made the machine move from London to San Francisco? Why it fell precisely in the middle of an HGWells exhibit? In which way that fact is an explanation? What a coincidence the machine dropped on an empty space instead of crushing a display cabinet or two! Nobody at the museum noticed that suddenly there was a gigantic contraption that wasn't there?

Wells and Ms Robbins stay after hours at the Museum to make a one-week jump in time. After they return, how do they get out of the Museum if it is closed? Worse yet: near the end, in the middle of the night, Ripper, carrying Miss Robbins as a hostage and closely followed by Wells, storm the Museum for the final scene. How did they get inside? Was the Museum open at night? In spite of all the imaginable clatter of three people running in (one under duress), no museum guards appear to see what's going on.

The final scene is hilarious. The Ripper, a cold blooded murderer, at the last moment lets Miss Robbins escape, showing that he was a bleeding heart, after all. Apparently he is feeble minded, as he is easily distracted by the ringing of his pocket watch (which rings several times during the film. What is the meaning of the watch? It was never remotely explained).

Then, Ripper is going to escape in The Machine. But at the last moment, Wells simply removes a second key and sends the Ripper "to the infinity". Let alone asking where the hell that place Infinity is: how did Wells know that Infinity is where Ripper went? He had tried that himself?

Killing the Ripper in a more conventional way would have worked equally well, with less absurdity imposed upon viewers. Wells could have used the pistol that first adamantly --and after a grand-standing pacifist speech-- he was refusing to get in spite of Ms. R.'s life being at risk but later he did get because Ms. R.'s life was at risk. (Wells should have made up his mind.)

With the Ripper's threat on the girl's life pending, Wells advises her to move to a hotel ONLY if he does not come back. So he leaves her defenseless (in alcoholic stupor!) in her own apartment, though it is clear Ripper knows where she resides. What prevented her from moving to the hotel first, and only later sleep? She was understandably scared of the Ripper, who could come any moment, so --logically enough-- she accepts staying in the house alone and take a nap. A very clever and probable behavior of them both; another sterling moment for the screenwriter.

Of all places, why on Earth was the police waiting for HG outside Miss Robbins' house? How did the cops learn of her existence? If they knew about her: why they did not take her to the Precinct for interrogation (at least as a witness)?

The Police Detective (Defective, rather) is devoid of any curiosity. After arresting Wells in front of the girl's house and listening him repeatedly beg to send a police car to her house he is still not interested in having a word or two with the girl and he seems certain that nothing bad could happen to her.

When it becomes clear to the Police Defective that Wells can't be the murderer he frees Wells, in spite of the fact that it is also evident that HG knows the murderer and he could help the police identify him. Apparently the Defective's lack of curiosity includes that he does not want to have a dictated portrait/profile made by a police artist upon Wells' description of the Ripper.

Even more: after Wells is freed, at some arbitrary place in the city and in the middle of the night, the Ripper --with the girl as a hostage-- easily finds him. Is San Francisco that small? Is it empty at night?

It turns out the latest victim was not Miss Robbins, but a friend of hers that dropped by for dinner, though Ms R didn't remember the appointment. How convenient! How probable is this to happen!

How lucky the heroes are: when they climbed into the machine and jumped one week ahead they stopped exactly the right day to learn that Ms Robbins was going to be killed! (One day more or less and they've learned nothing.) In compensation for this lucky strike, they have awfully bad luck with the tire puncture (which apparently also belongs in the category of very probable things to happen.) Couldn't Mr Director think of a better reason to delay the heroes? Obviously not; the film is plagued with these contrived suspense-making devices.

And so on. This is an amateurish film made by an unimaginative newbie who still needed to learn the tricks of the trade.

As pure entertainment, I would give it a 9. But then, some gross incoherencies (or plain stupidity) in the behaviour of the characters brings the film down a notch.

And then, probably the biggest flaw is the idea that the hero is really an assassin prepared to do this killing. It is one sommersault too many. The plot would have worked equally well (and it would have been far more believable) if the thing would have remained at: Harris (a real scientist) was supplanted because it was the best way to put an assassin close to the target (whether the target be the prince or the botanist, or both, it doesn't matter much; that detail would had been just another McGuffin). But the film makers decided to resort, once again, to the old Jason Bourne surprise surprise. (This "Jason, you are a hitman" concoction was a bad idea added to the second version of "The Bourne Identity". In the original miniseries, starring Richard Chamberlain, Bourne suspects or fears all the time that he is a professional killer but it turns out that he is a mole planted by the forces of good to dismantle the organization of assassins.)

Finally, we should not forget that the hero --though he goes through an unexplicable conversion to sanctity (a mysterious blessing which remains in his head even after his memory returned to normal)-- apparently killed many people during his dark past as a hitman, but in the end he escapes (with the pretty heroine) riding towards the horizon, to remain forever unpunished for those crimes. A good moral lesson.