The Next Man

I found "The Arab Conspiracy" in a bargain bin and thought I'd uncovered a lost treasure. Folks, there's a reason why you don't hear much about this film. The plot is muddy, the pacing is slow, Cornelia Sharpe is about as vivacious as plain, cold tofu, and the ending leaves you flat. Not even Sean Connery can save this one.

Two of my very dear actors, Sean Connery and Adolfo Celi, after the extraordinary "Thunderball", reunited in "The Next Man". But, unfortunately, Adolfo Celi only has one line, after which he is killed at the beginning of the film and we don't see him again. After she takes off her panties, a sign that she will make love to him, Cornelia Sharpe does something completely different, as you will see in the movie. Someone wrote on YouTube where I saw the film that it is "an explosive action film". It is not explosive at all, not in the action sense. There are 4 explosions at the end, some bombs placed in diplomatic briefcases explode, but the rest of the movie is just boring chatter. Except for the assassination attempt on the island and the coup de grace given at the very end in the car. What I don't understand is how a woman (Cornelia Sharpe's character) can make love to a man (Sean Connery's character) and then kill him. I think she came to love him in turn, but for a lot of money, you do anything. Sharpe, in Romanian, means snake.

It has an interesting plot, and a political message. Imagine the Saudis sending a man of peace to the UN, to change OPEC. Other than that, it resembles Day of the Jackal in some respects, and Cornelia Sharpe is dazzling. Scenes of New York prior to 9/11 are always poignant, and Connery does a fine job. His "conversion" sparks a multitude of organizations to try to stop him from doing further damage. There is much to look at, and the pace is fast. I enjoyed his pleasure at confronting the UN members from the Mid-East who were outraged by his refusal to parrot the OPEC line. There is always a "next man"... or woman...who has a mission to perform.

The remarkable thing about this movie is that it was fully conceived, filmed, and released *before* Anwar Sadat and the Camp David Accords, and, in its own way, echoes the events in its own future. If you are too young to remember these events, then I recommend you look it up in Wikipedia... Then realize that this movie did not follow that history, it preceded it.

Not much should be expected of the movie, it is a definite B-movie from Connery's lower-rent period, when he did a lot of doubtful pictures following his "Never Again" appearance in "Diamonds Are Forever", and before his talent, so evident in his early, pre-Bond pictures, was re-recognized by critics and fans alike.

It is a decent and effective, if not surprising picture, and Connery himself does an effective job as an Arab leader seeking to end the strife with Israel, against substantial political opposition. At the time, the whole idea of it seemed preposterously far in the future, but in reality, the Camp David Accords were less than 4 years away.

This is a case of a bunch of people thinking they are so clever they have a story that fits the time. Remember the all-around political conspiracies caught on camera in the years leading to the Watergate and a little later? Most movies trying to cash in on made-for-TV 'o so powerful, o so mind numbing' conspiracies were in fact caught in their own navel-gazing attitude.

I was never a fan of The Conversation which I find as much dated as others conspiracy stints of the time but Coppola was true to his main character and Hackman was a pretty engaging actor to observe. I mean these conspiracy movies are mostly drowning in the character pool of noir heroes. Lots of questions unanswered, lots of dis-communication... Well this takes at least Bergman to build a movie about such un-visual bases.

The Next Man is a perfect example of its time: one political soup served with an idealistic character and an horrendous conspiracy tightening its web around him. Neither part is interesting in itself and the whole doesn't get any better. In fact you can tell how much it will be bad from the very first sequences piling up 'watcha that' murders without ever advancing any storyline. Pedestrian directing at its worst as most of the movie is one pompous accumulation of scenes revolving around violence naively brought under the viewer's eyes.