Night Watch

This is not a great film. It's certainly no Where Eagles Dare and it's not even a Puppet on a Chain. And if you were hoping for a Brosnan film in the style of Goldeneye or The Thomas Crown Affair, forget it. The cast deserve better, but if you ignore the star names and don't set your expectations too high, it's an OK TV action flick.

It wants to be a (low-budget) Bond movie with glamorous locations and a series of action sequences to make you forget a paper-thin plot, but there's no finesse to it, it's all a bit pedestrian. The dialogue creaks, the accents are all over the shop, and the direction uneven. There's several nods to Puppet on a Chain, with a lot of action set on the canals of Amsterdam, and I suspect that Brosnan had already been cast as Bond before filming the casino scene (Nightwatch came out a month before Goldeneye).

The main problem with the film is that it all hangs on the relationship between Brosnan and Paul, which has little chemistry and is badly developed. I've not read the book but it feels like a fairly minor female character has been expanded to accommodate Paul at the height of her Baywatch fame, when just following the original story was at the limits of the scriptwriter's capabilities - and writing decent dialogue was waaay beyond him.

Despite all that it rattles along at a reasonable pace, it's a passable way to spend 90 minutes if you don't expect too much of it.

I had heard of these Detonator movies Pierce Brosnan made films years. I found them at my local library and finally watched them. These are mostly a curiosity to his James Bond fans. I wonder when this second film was shot? Before or after his Goldeneye contract was signed. When he signed that contract he had long hair and beard for a movie of Robinson Crusoe which filmed before Goldeneye actually filmed.

It's well known that after Roger Moore did a James Bond parody in Cannonball Run that every Bond actor's contract was updated to prevent that. They could never appear in tuxedos or play similar characters to Bond while doing the role.

I suspect Pierce did not cut his hair or fully shave after Robinson Crosoe when he did this for that reason. In the Casino scene he wears a Tux jacket but no tie. Yet when the Original Detonator was made he looks his normal clean cut look. At that time Timothy Dalton was playing Bond and Brosnan had no reason to think that would change soon.

The most curious thing is in this sequel he acts so much more like Bond than he did in the original. Makes it feel like James Bond is working undercover in the UN. ALtered his appearance and name to hide his real identity!

This has to be the worst movie ever made, Ed Wood come back All is forgiven.

I thought by renting this movie it was going to be a good spy/action movie BUT alas what I got has to be on the list for the worst movies ever made. From what I can make out this movie is about a stolen painting. I really don't know what it was about as after 10 minutes of this movie I decided to go out into the back yard and watch the grass grow.

Mr. Brosnan you should be ashamed of yourself for making this DUD

"Night Watch" is the follow-up to "Death Train", made 2 years earlier, but while Pierce Brosnan and Alexandra Paul play the same characters, they act more like spies and less like commandos this time around. It's fun noting all the parallels this movie, and Brosnan's character in particular, has to the James Bond series: he is an experienced secret agent; he regularly travels worldwide; he assumes a fake identity as a cover; he is given a watch equipped with all sorts of gadgets ("it does more than tell the time, eh?"); he visits the casino and cleans up the joint; he even orders a vodka martini; and of course he gets involved in fights and chases. The main difference is that Brosnan doesn't have the perfectly polished appearance of Bond here; he has unkempt hair and a long mustache. Alexandra Paul is (of course) gorgeous and tough and knows how to defend herself in moments of danger. The two stars get an enjoyable chemistry going and if Brosnan hadn't been cast as Bond the very same year, I could see them doing more films together. Like its predecessor, "Night Watch" is a medium-scale action film that knows its limitations, has some exciting action sequences, and provides more than passable entertainment to fans of the genre. (***)

Oh dear. Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear. I only actually caught the last 20 minutes of this film, at about quarter to one this morning. Apparently it was about a stolen painting, a long-haired GI (Brosnan), some woman, and Murdock from the A-Team.

One of the best scenes in the film was when Brosnan's character tried to throw a bomb through a window. However, the window didn't smash and it bounced right back at him. This could have been unintentional and they kept it in, or it was meant to happen. Either way, it just added to the overall low budget, tacky fee of the movie.

So if you fancy a B-movie warm up to Brosnan's first outing as James Bond, rent it. If you fancy a good movie then stay well clear.