Icon

I recently rented this promising mini series, I didn't even know they had adapted it for television. I was really looking forward to it since the book Icon is one of the best spy thrillers I have ever read. What a disappointment it was. The plot only loosely resembles the one in the book, the characters are completely miscast and there's some appalling acting. A shame really. The story behind Icon is perfect for the silver screen, but I think television budgets just aren't big enough for a decent adaptation of this spectacular book.

Forsyth deserves much, much better than this. Avoid and stick to the book, which is a must-read.

Frederick Forsyth's books are always so intricately plotted, with twists and turns, and usually a great surprise ending. This adaptation had none of that.

So much of what was great in the book (the history of Monk and the betrayed agents; the plot to influence the outcome of the Russian election) were completely missing in this adaptation. Instead, there's this completely new plot about bio-weapons that was a yawner.

Forsyth's protagonists always operated in the shadows, forever just slightly beyond the reach of the antagonists. The joys of his books have always been the machinations of carrying out their mission. This film resigned itself to gunfights and car chases early on.

Swayze's Monk might as well have hung a sign around his neck saying "I AM A SECRET AGENT" for all the attention that he called to himself during the film. And with all of that attention, the amount of time that it took the bad guys to catch up to him was surprising.

Granted there was some energy to this film, which is why I'm giving it a "3" instead of a "1". It was also great to see some underutilized pros like Patrick Bergin, Ben Cross, Michael York, and Barry Morse.

I hope that someday, someone will once again do justice to a Forsyth film adaptation like "Day of the Jackal" did.

"Icon" was a fun, if long, miniseries. Patrick Swayze plays Jason Monk, who is an ex-CIA agent. As usual, he's roped into one last case. Here, it's by Nigel (Michael York). His assignment is to take down presidential hopeful Igor Komarov (Patrick Bergin). Igor wants to rule the world. I'm not kidding.

Thankfully, the movie is full of action. Patrick Swayze does a good job, but in some scenes he looks very old. Patrick Bergin goes over the top. I think he perfected his Russian accent by watching Natasha on "Rocky and Bullwinkle". Michael York is his usual professional self. The standout performance is by Jeff Fahey as a presidential aide.

In the end: If you don't mind the 3-hour running time, it's worth watching. If you can, take a look at the foreign trailer! For more insanity, please visit: comeuppancereviews.com

Adapted from a Frederick Forsythe's novel - entertaining but nothing more - this TV movie is entertaining, not really boring, rather well made and also faithful to the book - as far as I remember - but because the book was not that exciting, I can't imagine the movie being better than the book, especially if it is faithful to it. Follow me? Anyway Frederick Forsythe's best novel will always remain his first DAY OF THE JACKAL, period. For the rest, the main good thing with him is that it is so well researched in terms of accuracy and details, which you don't feel in a film, no matter the directing and acting obvious skills. And also suspense always kept tight in Forsythe's material.

Right, well I stumbled upon this 2005 TV movie titled "Icon" by random chance. And I opted to sit down and watch it, given the fact that it was something that I hadn't already seen.

I am not overly much a fan of Patrick Swayze, but he does have some good enough movies and TV shows to his name, so I figured that a movie that ran for 3 hours and 10 minutes might have potential.

Writers Adam Armus and Nora Kay Foster managed to put together a good enough storyline here. Sure, I am not familiar with the book or books written by Frederick Forsyth, so I have no idea how close "Icon" is to the source material. But while "Icon" was adequately entertaning, it just wasn't a particularly outstanding movie experience. And I assume that the phrase "Patrick Swayze is CIA agent Jason Monk" is supposed to have a meaning, but then again, I didn't read the books.

For a movie that ran for 190 minutes, then it was somewhat of an ordeal to sit through, as the movie was way too long. The editing could easily have trimmed down the movie quite substantially in my opinion. And the fact that the script was bland, just didn't really help much to make time go by quicker.

The movie does, however, have a good ensemble of actors and actresses, with the likes of Patrick Swayze, Michael York, Ben Cross, Jeff Fahey, Annika Peterson and Joss Ackland.

Ultimately then "Icon" was watchable, but it turned out to be too long and just downright too mundane and bland in comparison to other action thrillers of the same kind.

My rating of the 2005 TV movie "Icon" lands on a five out of ten stars.