Golden Rendezvous

"Golden Rensezvous" looks and sounds a lot like a TV movie, but the one thing that is quite un-TV-like about it, at least for its era, is the amount of violence it contains: lots of bloody squibs, stabbings, even a massacre of innocent people. The film is also notable for its similarities to "Die Hard", which came out a decade later: terrorists and hostages in a confined space (this time, a ship), and one resourceful hero who has to fight them from the inside. Of course you have to ignore the various implausibilities, like the astonishingly easy way in which the bad guys smuggle themselves AND a bomb inside the ship. Unfortunately, Richard Harris, who is usually an excellent actor (check out the same year's "Orca" for an example), seems to be operating on autopilot here, except when he's in action. Ann Turkel is decorative most of the way, until she picks up a machine gun near the very end. There are some other big names in the cast, but most of them are almost completely wasted. The movie gets a passing grade, but you can see why it is largely forgotten today. ** out of 4.

Poor old Alistair MacLean. With a few exceptions, movie makers the world over have managed to turn his very well written stories into not-so well written movies. In this attempt, a tired looking Richard Harris plays Ships Officer Carter, trying to deal with odd passengers, strange coffins and even stranger outfits as worn by the lovely Ann Turkel. Toss in a couple of not so great cameos from David Janssen and Dorothy Malone, a not so scary John Vernon, assorted plot "twists" (I use the term in it's broadest possible sense), and you get a movie that has all the pieces but never actually works out where they go.

What does it have going for it? A good basic storyline, some magnificent music (a great score from Jeff Wayne), a couple of quite good stunts and Ann Turkel. However, against this you have several examples of very ordinary acting, a plot that doesn't so much unfold as explode, the slowest "5 minute countdown" ever to take place in Hollwywood and the travesty of having MacLean's wonderful last "plot twist" (as read in the book) ignored so that Harris can go running around armed with a submachine and a determined look.

*sigh* The Guns of Navarone, Force 10 from Navarone, Where Eagles Dare and Ice Station Zebra (despite it's flaws) were examples of how to make a MacLean come alive on the screen. Golden Rendezvous does not make the grade.

Rafe Nottage Sydney 16 May 2005

Alistair Mc Lean was definitely the true and authentic DNA provider of the action action packed movies huge, gruesome wave that we saw in the nineties and till the late twenties, and which many folks told it was all DIE HARD rip offs. You also had Walter Wager - whose 58 MINUTES inspired DIE HARD 2 - and Colin Forbes, who gave us tremendous novels about terrorists and spies, action thrillers that riveted you to your sofa. Well all those stories were not always top but worth though. This one is not the worst, far from that. Worth and not the worst. And I would add that film takes advantage of the disaster movie 'fashion" of the seventies to mix it up with the scheme of terrorists and hostages. One last thing, no one seems to have noticed that Dick Harris gives here a performance very close to the one he pulled in another sea thriller, about another terrorist plot, the terrific JUGGERNAUT, where he faced David Hemmings.

Alistair McClean's Golden Rendezvous has Richard Harris as first officer Carter who on-board the casino/cargo ship the Caribbean star becomes involved with intrigue and the usual McClean daring do. John Vernon is the villainous Carreas who holds the ship to ransom with an atomic bomb in return for gold bullion, the inspiration for Die- Hard is all too apparent you have Harris sneaking about the ship in a manner all too familiar which Bruce Willis would later emulate Ann Turkel(former Mrs Richard Harris) Burgess Meredith as a shady gambler, John Carradine also a gambler. it's an entertaining film which is unobtainable for years! as luck would have it you can watch this on you-tube! hopefully some bright spark will release this on the shiny format.

Terrorists kidnap a nuclear scientist. Later a strange passenger and strange cargo are loaded aboard a tramp steamer which will pass within a few miles of a ship loaded with gold bullion. Coincidence?

THE GOLDEN RENDEZVOUS is one of those films which evokes "what ifs..." What if the producers had attached the prelude filmed when the show was broadcast on network TV? What if they had hired someone other than the thoroughly soused Richard Harris? What if Ann Turkel had been costumed in sexier outfits? And what if the producers hadn't hired a very overweight (and, at that time, very well known) Dorothy Malone for a throwaway role?

The prelude, added for TV does wonders for the films exposition. The film sans the prelude is much truer to the Alistair MacLean novel, but what is clever in novels is sometimes simply baffling on the screen. The ending is actually better than the novel; and, it would have been great if Harris hadn't resorted to some silly derring-do with dual submachine guns; and even better if he hadn't forgotten his lines in the denouement?

The best thing about this movie is the terrific (and I mean TERRIFIC) score by Jeff Wayne. The music adds a sense of urgency one never feels from what is up on the screen.