Night Watch

I don't know much about Alistair McLean's series, "Detonator." I haven't seen the first film in this series but you don't need too. Pierce Brosnan played Michael Graham, an United Nations agent, who works with Alexandra Paul's Sabrina Carver to find the missing artistic masterpiece, "The Night Watch." They go around the world to Europe and Hong Kong to find it. Supporting cast actors, William Devane and Rolf Saxon do an admirable job in playing agents. The scenery in the film overshadows the plot. There is a budding chemistry and romance between Graham and Carver but predictable.

this is the second movie in the Detonator series.you should probably watch the first one before this one,just to get an idea of the agency and the characters.it goes by the title Detonator or sometimes Death Train.anyway,this movie is bit a bit different than the first one.this one is a bit more hi tech,with a few gadgets.it's sort of James Bond lite.in this one a very expensive painting has been stolen and a fake one put in it's place.so,the team is hired to find the authentic painting and return it.but that's just part of the story.there's a lot more going on.there's a bit more action in this one,but it's still not really fast paced.Pierce Brosnan and Alexandra Paul team up once again,and instead of Patrick Stewart as the boss,this time we have William Devane.i don't have a problem with Devane,i just wish they had also kept Stewart also .as i said,this move has more action,but still seems fairly slow.believability is a bit strained in this one.i don't think they were going for realism.i did,however like the story,although it isn't very original.still,it's entertaining and a decent enough diversion.i don't think it's worse than the first one,but it's not really better either.for me Detonator 2 AKA Night Watch is a 6/10

Oh dear. Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear. I only actually caught the last 20 minutes of this film, at about quarter to one this morning. Apparently it was about a stolen painting, a long-haired GI (Brosnan), some woman, and Murdock from the A-Team.

One of the best scenes in the film was when Brosnan's character tried to throw a bomb through a window. However, the window didn't smash and it bounced right back at him. This could have been unintentional and they kept it in, or it was meant to happen. Either way, it just added to the overall low budget, tacky fee of the movie.

So if you fancy a B-movie warm up to Brosnan's first outing as James Bond, rent it. If you fancy a good movie then stay well clear.

This is not a great film. It's certainly no Where Eagles Dare and it's not even a Puppet on a Chain. And if you were hoping for a Brosnan film in the style of Goldeneye or The Thomas Crown Affair, forget it. The cast deserve better, but if you ignore the star names and don't set your expectations too high, it's an OK TV action flick.

It wants to be a (low-budget) Bond movie with glamorous locations and a series of action sequences to make you forget a paper-thin plot, but there's no finesse to it, it's all a bit pedestrian. The dialogue creaks, the accents are all over the shop, and the direction uneven. There's several nods to Puppet on a Chain, with a lot of action set on the canals of Amsterdam, and I suspect that Brosnan had already been cast as Bond before filming the casino scene (Nightwatch came out a month before Goldeneye).

The main problem with the film is that it all hangs on the relationship between Brosnan and Paul, which has little chemistry and is badly developed. I've not read the book but it feels like a fairly minor female character has been expanded to accommodate Paul at the height of her Baywatch fame, when just following the original story was at the limits of the scriptwriter's capabilities - and writing decent dialogue was waaay beyond him.

Despite all that it rattles along at a reasonable pace, it's a passable way to spend 90 minutes if you don't expect too much of it.

"Night Watch" is the follow-up to "Death Train", made 2 years earlier, but while Pierce Brosnan and Alexandra Paul play the same characters, they act more like spies and less like commandos this time around. It's fun noting all the parallels this movie, and Brosnan's character in particular, has to the James Bond series: he is an experienced secret agent; he regularly travels worldwide; he assumes a fake identity as a cover; he is given a watch equipped with all sorts of gadgets ("it does more than tell the time, eh?"); he visits the casino and cleans up the joint; he even orders a vodka martini; and of course he gets involved in fights and chases. The main difference is that Brosnan doesn't have the perfectly polished appearance of Bond here; he has unkempt hair and a long mustache. Alexandra Paul is (of course) gorgeous and tough and knows how to defend herself in moments of danger. The two stars get an enjoyable chemistry going and if Brosnan hadn't been cast as Bond the very same year, I could see them doing more films together. Like its predecessor, "Night Watch" is a medium-scale action film that knows its limitations, has some exciting action sequences, and provides more than passable entertainment to fans of the genre. (***)