O Santo

Accept this for what it is- a failed television pilot with added scenes added to pad it out to movie length.

The main reason this never made it to series has to be Eliza Dushku. She is a "black hole" that causes all action to stop any time she is on camera. She behaves as if she is heavily medicated -- delivering each and every line with the same flat monotone. I wonder why any performer with such a severely limited range can have a career even in Hollywood.

The other major failing here is with the basic plot. It is about as generic as possible, Absolutely nothing in this film is even remotely new or fresh -- it all has a "seen this all before many many times" aspect to it.

It's quite frustrating to see a such a good movie idea as The Saint go to waste again and again since the original. Past that, this version is OK to watch if one has nothing else to watch, at a time when one MUST watch something... It has here and there some bits of good humor, action and acting ,but all in all it cannot shake off the B movie feel.

The Saint was intended to be a relaunched television series starring Adam Rayner as Simon Templar. A few years after the initial pilot, there were some additional footage shot to turn it into a feature length direct to pay TV release.

Simon Templar also known as The Saint is called on by a man who has robbed billions for the shadowy organisation he works from a poor African nation. The man works for the Fixer (Ian Ogilvy) who is most unhappy that his right hand man has grown a conscious, he wants the money back and so he has kidnapped his daughter.

Templar has to find his daughter as well as evading an FBI agent who is determined to track him down. However when Templar sees a certain ring, it brings back memories of the past and a betrayal by someone he was once close to.

Ever since the interminably dull Simon Dutton television movies from 1989, the reputation of The Saint on screen has suffered. The viewer wants something more than just a posh gentleman but slightly shady adventurer who comes to the rescue of a damsel in distress in some exotic location.

This film has extensive location shooting and still at times looks cheap with green screen. Rayner seems to get there as Templar at the end, it helps that he seems comfortable with some of the action footage. However the story is just workmanlike and generic.

The film has the gimmick of actually having the Three Saints. Ogilvy plays the villain with some links to the Knights Templar and he certainly seems to be enjoying himself. The late Sir Roger Moore pops up as well giving his successor, Ogilvy a telling off.

To know The Saint one must be truthful to the source material. The Saint as a character is brash, abrasive, annoyingly intelligent, and driven by a set a principals to do the right thing, even if "right" in any given instance is stealing, murder, or any other action that on the outside is technically a crime. "The ends justifies the means" is a kind of MO for The Saint, which creates a sort of dilemma - especially in the west - where we tend to regard all individuals - good and bad - to be subject to the same rules. But, is it really a crime if the subject had it coming to them? Such is life of The Saint - getting rich while sticking it to the bad guy. Or saving the girl. Or righting the wrong. Or insert cliché' here. Fun stuff all around.

Unfortunately, most of the texture of The Saint is lost in attempts to portray him just as a lovable, quip-flinging, thief. A sort of James Bond type who always has something witty to say at the right moment. Anyone who has read any of the Charteris novels would strongly disagree.

Which brings us to this latest attempt to put Saint on film. All the elements are there but watered down and cliché'd to the point of atrophy. Although this is the most lovingly adaptation attempt since the Roger Moore days. In short, I like this Saint, but the film won't get out of it's own way. There's been a strong push in Hollywood in recent decades to use technology as a panacea to whatever problem the antagonist might come across. Sixteen-inch steel vault door? No problem - just hack that sucker and in you go.

It gets real old real fast.

We want to see our heroes solve problems, not have them solved for them by inexplicable (and non-existent) technology. In the days of the original Saint - the 1920's and 1930's - you still had to do real detective work to solve mysteries. Now all one needs is a tablet and a wifi connection and you can tell everything about anything anytime anywhere.

Where's the fun in that?

So far as this film is concerned, this Simon Templar is more like the real Saint since Roger Moore - so watch it for that. Otherwise - or in addition to - go find a copy of Meet the Tiger and enjoy the real Saint.

Well, I take that back. I wasn't crazy about Val Kilmer.

I loved George Sanders, Louis Hayward, Ian Ogilvy and Roger Moore as The Saint. Since this version featured two ex-saints, Ogilvy and Moore, I wanted to see it.

Yikes.

This is a TV movie, and if you've been having trouble sleeping, this is just the thing. What a slow-moving bore replete with flashbacks of little Simon and the past life of his assistant (Eliza Dushku). And next to no plot.

Ian Ogilvy looked awful -- someone said here Moore looked awful - give the man a break - he was in his mid-'80s (this was made in 2013 as a TV pilot and was not picked up - what a shock). No one is dazzling forever.

Lots of karate-type moves. That's about it. At an hour and a half, it felt like Birth of a Nation.

Simon Rayner didn't excite me, although I'm sure he's very good in other films. But what could one expect from him, no doubt trying to stay awake.