Billion Dollar Brain

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.

For roughly the first twenty five minutes of it's running time, "Billion Dollar Brain" looks like it's shaping up to be something very good indeed. And then, slowly but surely, the whole thing unravels. By the time a further hour or so has elapsed, neither you nor Harry Palmer know nor particularly care what the hell is going on. The blame for this lies firmly at the door of director Ken Russell.

When we first reacquaint ourselves with Caine's coolly amused hero, he is operating as a private eye from a seedy, rundown office in Central London. And living almost exclusively on corn flakes. His superior, Colonel Ross (played once more by the wonderful Guy Doleman), wants him back in the service. Harry's not interested, but a little persuasion and blackmail ensures that he's soon off to Finland to deliver a thermosflask to a mysterious professor. Here he encounters the spectacularly sexy Francoise Dorleac and her highly unlikely lover, a lucky old sod played by Karl Malden.

People turn up dead, and triple-cross follows double-cross. But after a while it becomes pretty obvious that all of the complex subterfuge is merely an attempt to mask a rather run-of-the-mill 'madman takes over the world' plot.

Such is the stuff of every Bond picture, and it's a big disappointment after the relatively believable milieus of the first two Palmer flicks. The major problem, though, is that the director's hand is so uncertain, and his pacing so uneven, that we are never sure exactly what kind of film we are watching. Russell mixes the starkly beautiful mise en scene and ready cynicism of a 'realistic' cold war drama with the pop-art excesses of a Broccoli fantasy, but the cake doesn't rise. Heavy-handed attempts at political satire just make the warmed-over fare even more inedible.

There are compensations: Russell knows how to frame a shot, and Billy Williams' cinematography is often extremely beautiful (especially when shooting the ill-fated Dorleac). All of the main performers are charismatic and Richard Rodney Bennett turns in an atmospheric score. The spookily evocative theremin-like sound is created using an ancient French keyboard instrument, the ondes martinot.

In the draggy latter-half, a couple of sequences manage to pique the interest, especially the superbly staged 'Alexander Nevsky' parody, framed by the surreal contrasts of blinding white ice and pitch black sky. There is also an eerie, darkly comic sequence in which Harry awakes in a bathtub full of dead bodies, unsure of what exactly is happening. Unfortunately, all of the surrounding guff only serves to dull their impact.

Amuse yourself in the tedious stretches by looking out for blink-and-you'll-miss-em spots by Susan George and Donald Sutherland. Caine's brother Stanley also appears as the postman in the opening scene.

Enjoyable if dated, they are still using punch cards to program their computers!, espionage thriller with a solid cast. Caine is cool as ice as the reluctant protagonist casting a jaundiced eye on all the shenanigans going on around him. Francoise Dorleac is a lovely mystery woman although her character seems to vanish at several key points in the film when it feels like she would be there. This might be because she was killed in a traffic accident while the picture was still filming necessitating a rethinking to still make her completed work usable. She's quite magnetic, her resemblance to her sister Catherine Deneuve is striking, and her death cut short a career that was already very successful in France and was starting to expand worldwide. Ed Begley also stands out, having a great time as a crazy old coot. Subtle he ain't but memorable for sure.

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.