All'inseguimento della morte rossa

British agent Harry Palmer (Michael Caine) is doing a nothing job observing the North Korean Embassy when a demonstration turns violent. An old lady assassinates Russian genetics scientist Prof. Kulbitsky outside of the embassy and Harry hears his final words. Harry gets retired due to budget cuts. He is lured to St. Petersburg where he meets Nikolai (Jason Connery), Natasha (Mia Sara) and potential employer Alex (Michael Gambon). He is offered $250k to find a missing binary bio weapon Alorex or the Red Death bound for North Korea. He discovers the Alorex will be on a train to Beijing. On the train, he is befriended by ex-CIA Craig Warner (Michael Sarrazin). All the while, Harry is hounded by would-be assassins.

This is a continuation of Len Deighton's character Harry Palmer but not actually from a book of his. It's a TV movie elevated by Michael Caine returning as Harry. The action isn't slick like 007 but it's exotic enough. Harry is not the dashing 007 and that's what sets him apart from his more famous cousin. It's Bond with poorer action and a better cat-and-mouse game. The production is generally second rate. Other than Michael Caine, there isn't anything superior in this movie.

After 30 years Harry Palmer ( Michael Caine) returns a bit older but still amused and amusing. There are at least two versions of this film. In the one I own, Sue Lloyd makes a brief appearance as Harry's old girl friend Jean, now a blonde, sexy widow. They have a suggested sex scene. This was worth some of the lapses in the films storyline. However, I though Caine, Connery and Michael Gambon were all first rate and the running gags about redundant, over-the-hill secret agents worked for me.The locale of St Petersburg is fresh and the complications of plot ( who is one whose side), falling off the train, the problems of the decaying yet free market Soviet Union, etc. are interesting. I like BULLET and have actually watched it twice in 2 weeks. Too bad its sequel was a bit redundant itself.

After almost thirty years, Michael Caine is back playing Harry Palmer. However, it has been THIRTY YEARS--and, like the expression goes, you can never go back--and that certainly is true of "Bullet to Beijing". Unlike the earlier Palmer stories, Len Deighton was not involved with this one...and I think it shows. The first three films of the series ("The Ipcress File", "Funeral in Berlin" and "Billion Dollar Brain") were great--a nice alternative to a Bond film. Here, however, it looks like there is a lot more Bond and a lot less Harry Palmer.

After three decades with the British secret service, Palmer is summarily retired without so much as a thank you. Soon, he receives an offer to work for someone else--though they don't identify who they are--they just give him a ticket to meet them in Russia. Harry takes the offer (why?) and soon is transported into a world completely unlike his earlier film efforts. Here is the problem--the film is again and again an ACTION film. But the earlier films deliberately avoided being action films. Sure, things happened--but most of the time Palmer stood by on the sidelines. And, there were none of the usual insane James Bond miraculous escapes. Here in "Bullet to Beijing", it's one action sequence after another after another--including way too many shootouts that resulted in folks with pistols taking out many folks with machine guns!!! Now I know a marksman can do amazing things with a pistol--but to again and again take out baddies with automatic weapons?! And, the other major problem is that folks keep changing sides!! Again and again, you need a scorecard to keep track of who is one who's side! To me, this just seemed sloppy. The overall effort is a passable ACTION film but one severely disappointing to those expecting the Harry Palmer of old. It's made worse by the end, where, inexplicably, the baddies just let Palmer go after he destroys their evil plan!!! Uggh.

I first broke into the Harry Palmer series when I thought Midnight in St. Petersburg sounded like a good film in the TV guide, and it had Michael Caine in it. Since then (realising there was more of it)I've become quite a fan of the series, not really minding if it was the vintage 60s or the modern 90s.

Bullet to Beijing was the fourth film out of the five that I've seen (I've yet to see the somewhat rare Billion Dollar Brain) and I thought it was a good film, certainly worthy of at least a 6.5 rating on IMDB. I know fans of the vintage 60s were somewhat opposed to this even being made, because it was obviously not going to be as good as The Ipcress File.

And it's not. The Ipcress File is still the best of Harry Palmer, but I thought this was the second best of the series. I found Funeral in Berlin to be mind-numbingly tedious, and Midnight in St. Petersburg didn't quite live up to this one.

First thing, I'm going to address a few issues regarding plot holes or continuity. Make no mistake, this is one of those films you'll probably have to watch twice or even three times to fully comprehend all that's going on. You have to concentrate on it, you can't watch it and talk on the phone at the same time. So most plot holes are probably down to something the viewer missed (I certainly thought that the first time I watched it).

This certainly isn't vintage Palmer, and I give it credit for not trying to be. Palmer is on the verge of retirement anyway, and so he's not going to be as quick or sharp as he once was (at least they didn't try and pretend he was still young!). Even so, he's still somewhat quick-witted and amusing, the milk in the tea joke being my favourite. He doesn't run from danger, something present in all the movies, even when he's being followed by the mafia, he's fairly daring once he's got away from them.

As for the film itself, it's very fast-moving and fluid. There are a LOT of twists and turns in the plot, but I like the fact that's it's all within the time limit of the train arriving in Beijing, who's going to make it there etc. The trouble with something like the Ipcress File was the amount of free time Palmer had, and so it would sometimes seemingly stand still, whereas the train journey here gave it an edge.

That's my humble opinion anyway, maybe I'm just uncultured. This certainly doesn't have the class of the 60s, but it makes up for it with the action, humour and plot-twists.

8.5/10

Incidentally, if you can get hold of it, there's a special edition DVD where Sue Lloyd has a slightly bigger role than a voice on the telephone.

Michael Caine reprises his portrayal of the Len Deighton character "Harry Palmer" in this rather cheap and cheerful cold-war thriller. This time he joins forces with the handsome, but lightweight, Jason Connery ("Nick") as they work for the enigmatic "Alex" (an unlikely Russian Michael Gambon) to thwart a deadly plan to release a virus that has been pinched by some North Koreans. A few other familiar faces try their best to pep this along, but it's really just an amalgam of themes that is well past it's sell by date. Caine is there, but he isn't - maybe another swimming pool? The dialogue is really pretty pedestrian (though the "we're all getting a bit too old for this" byline does raise a smile now and again). It's got plenty of stylish location photography and the action scenes - of which there is a distinct paucity - are quite good fun when we get them. Otherwise, it's a mediocre television movie that I found placed the "Palmer' character in a series of fish-out-of-water scenarios that rather undermined the charm and novelty of his earlier outings. Caine can carry a film, his sheer weight of personality does that here - but this is certainly nobody's finest work.