The Cape Town Affair

Silly byplay between a few characters. A master pickpocket. A burned out police detective. A bunch of Commies. A piece of film. Some less than memorable acting. James Brolin, running the gamut of emotions from A to B. A confusing, endless story which continues to beg questions all along the way. There are some relationships that are left for us to figure out. The film is just so dull. I think all this cold war stuff has to at least have a little bit of causality. You can't have a suspense (or spy) movie without knowing what, exactly, the bad guys get out of the key piece of evidence. As usual, lots of people go through lots of wasted motion. Jacqueline Bisset is somewhat interesting, but even her role isn't very clealr.

I just bought this film for 4 dollars, and let me tell you, it wasn't worth it.

No budget, badly scripted, dull, boring, listless, "Cold War" stinker. Hard to believe that Samuel Fuller was involved in this "movie". There were lines like, "You want to help us fight the commies don't you?"

James Brolin looked handsome here, but the poor guy just wasn't an actor at this stage of his career. All he basically does is look angry and yell and scream the whole movie; gave me a headache. He is living in a run-down shack near a smelly river, with no electric, yet he wears 500 dollar suits. He's a thief who only robs twice the whole movie.

Horrible piece of worthless junk.

An inconsequential, almost scene-for-scene remake of Sam Fuller's great Pickup On South Street, The Cape Town Affair suffers from weak casting--James Brolin is no Richard Widmark, and Claire Trevor attempts but fails in her Thelma Ritter impersonation. Shot on location in South Africa, the film barely recognises the existence of non-white characters, and when it does--in the person of Muhammad, a sleazy fence--a white South African, Gabriel Bayman, assays the role. Whilst the film maintains the original's Free World vs. Red Peril dichotomy, it's impossible to ignore the political realities of South Africa in 1967. With Nelson Mandela still in the early stages of his time in prison, 'communist' in South Africa was virtually synonymous with 'anti-Apartheid activist'. The prominently featured pictures of Hendrick Verwoerd in almost every shot in the police department confirm that this film was just as intent on being state-sanctioned propaganda as on being a work of art.

Choppy, poorly directed remake of Pickup on South Street. James Brolin while attractive is bland in the lead never approaching the lowdown grit that Richard Widmark effortlessly gave the character in the original. This was one of Jacqueline Bisset's first roles and her inexperience is evident although at least part of the blame belongs with the director since her next few films, with stronger directors, show a marked improvement over her work here. Unsurprisingly the best performance in the film comes from Claire Trevor as the frowsy Sam but even she doesn't match the peerless performance of Thelma Ritter, considered by many her best work, in the first film. This was Claire's last film for 15 years until she made a delightful return as Sally Field's mother in Kiss Me Goodbye, a much better film than this, and then permanently retired. As for the rest of the film, everybody else gives terrible performances, scenes either just stop or start with a good deal of narrative flow missing and the photography is washed out and overly bright. Not an estimable credit on anybody's resume.

0th Century-Fox owned the rights to Sam Fuller's classic "Pickup on South Street", so why not make a few bucks with a cheap remake? It's poorly directed by hack Robert Webb and only of nostalgia value.

Stars James Brolin near the start of their careers are the reason to watch. Bisset is always among the screen's great beauties, including here, but she made so many fine films this one doesn't measure up. James Brolin indeed resembles Christian Bale, quite surprisingly in this incarnation, and I suppose Streisand might enjoy watching this junker more than most just to see what she missed, not finding him until later in life.

I liked the jazzy score, and the location photography, but the absence of any Black talent, even as extras, on screen is a sad testament to apartheid. Dozens of American-backed movies were shot in South Africa in the 1980s pretending to be made in the USA (but extremely easy to spot, especially the stinkers from Cannon Films), whilst Apartheid was being protested and finally overthrown -perhaps a part of Reaganomics. Recall how Reagan vetoed Congress's anti-Apartheid bill, and had to be overridden by both the House and Senate.