marktreut

This TV film, a pilot for a series that was never made, is pretty much standard action fare. Like the Val Kilmer 1997 film, it is about an international thief with a heart of gold, travelling the world and breaking the law, but he also has a conscious and will do his best to save the innocent.

I love the early "Saint" novels of the 1930s with their combination of action and humour and the way Simon Templar comes across as a fun-loving playboy who is actually a very dangerous man. I also enjoyed the early films with George Sanders and Hugh Sinclair but I have never really enjoyed the Roger Moore or the Ian Ogilvy TV series or the Val Kilmer film. Rayner's Saint is based more on the Moore-Ogilvy-Kilmer version of the character and little like Leslie Charteris' original.

However I am open-minded enough to give this film a chance. Adam Rayner makes quite a decent Saint. He comes about as a bit tougher than Moore and Ogilvy and the action keeps the pace going even if the plot is nothing really original.

Like the 1997 Kilmer movie, this film delves on Simon Templar's childhood but gives a very different version: unlike the orphan with an identity problem in the 1997 film, this one has him being born to wealthy parents who are killed before his eyes. A bit too "Batman" for my liking.

On the plus side the film gains with references to the original books. Simon is accompanied by girlfriend Patricia Holm, pursued by US cop John Henry Fernack, there is a reference to Inspector Teal of Scotland Yard, and his main enemy is Rayt Marius, all of whom appeared in the early Saint novels and short stories. This shows that at the very least the makers took some trouble to check the original source material.

When the Fixer first appeared, I kept trying to remember where I had heard that voice before, Imagine my surprise when I discovered from the end credits that it was Ian Ogilvy from the TV series "Return of the Saint". This, and the inclusion of Roger Moore as the Fixer's superior, is another nice touch. (They do make better villains than Saints, I have to say.)

On the downside, like Kilmer's Saint, Rayner's is too much of a good guy, a thief with a heart of gold who refrains from killing. He cannot even bring himself to shoot the man who killed his parents. Leslie Charteris' original had not such qualms: in some of the originals, he could be described as a "villain-if-he-was-not-the-hero".

And why does Patricia have to indicate to one of Simon's former lovers that her own relationship with him is platonic in a way similar to Modesty Blaise and Willy Garvin?

What I would love is another TV series of the Saint but set in the 1930s and 40s like the original books, a period drama like "Foyle's War" or "Endeavour". Film makers have been too focused making remakes of the cult Roger Moore version. It is time to go back to Leslie Charteris' original source material of the 1930s and 40s.

Very disappointing. I was somewhat led to believe that this programme would raise the issue of the death penalty as a matter of debate, but the real debate will have to be the mishandling by the programme makers. Quite aside from the fact that Glitter is charged with crimes committed beyond British jurisdiction, the fact that he is given only 30 days to appeal is quite frankly unbelievable. It's "Alice in Wonderland". This was a Britain that was so alternative that you expected the Prime Minister to be Robert Mugabe or Osama Bin Laden.

Furthermore there is the fact that this programme seemed only to "interview" those in favour of the death penalty, like Ann Widdecombe or Gary Bushell. There was nothing about the flip side of the coin, most notably the fact that justice has been known to make mistakes, or at the very least jailed people whose convictions are later questioned: Tim Evans (who was hanged), the Guildford Four or Barry George (convicted but later cleared of the Jill Dando murder).

On a separate note, the accidental music was dreadful and unnecessary. You cannot imagine the relief when we were sparred the playing of badly-tuned violins or the clonking of xylophones. It is time for this kind of thing to stop.

It's good to see to see dear old Brit Sean Bean in a Hollywood production set in modern times where he does not get to play the villain and is an official who is not so much gullible as going through all the official channels and still finding holes in the increasingly frustrated (and frustrating) heroine's story.

Towards the end of the film, Foster attacks Bean, warning him that he will have to apologise to her daughter for doubting her existence. (Though, can you blame him given her behaviour and attitude?) When she is finally found Bean does just that, but there is no sign of Foster apologising to the Arab for accusing him of the kidnap and attempted hijacking of the aircraft. The scene in which he hands her her suitcase does not say much. It would have been more effective if she had shacken his hand with a smile and said "Sorry for all the nasty things I said and my unfounded suspicions."

Quite frankly though we could do with an apology from the scriptwriters: marvellous plot full of twists and turns let down by a clichéd script.