In England, Colonel, the historic mission of the proletariat consists almost entirely of momentary interest.

Billion Dollar Brain

(1967)

(SPOILERS) A reluctant Ken Russell (his second feature, and helming under protest, so he said) at least ensures this final (well, until the ‘90s, if we really mustgo there) looks good. Crucially, however, it’s all but devoid of internal tension, except momentarily when Harry experiences an altercation or two with a couple of heavies. Which invariably leads to a ream of exposition from his captor; this is about as far from an espionage investigation or mystery begging to be solved as it gets, and while the Bond comparisons batted its way are slightly unfair, Billion Dollar Brain does support a similarly incidental approach to plotting.

The negligible sense of threat in Billion Dollar Brain means those Harry encounters are largely affable or persuadable after the initial introductions, as he casually traipses through snow from side to side or visits masterminds’ lairs. That and the Maurice Binder-meets-Austin Powers, Bond-esque title sequence add to a vague sense of hapless spoofery, although not in the way that would later inspire such twisted delights in Diamonds are Forever.

Ross: Do you get all your equipment from Kelloggs?

It’s a shame, as it begins so well, with the underused Guy Doleman as Colonel Ross dropping in unannounced of the now absconded Palmer (he’s become a detective) and trying to persuade him to return to the fold. That Harry’s almost immediately off on a spy mission, at the behest of the computer of the title/ old chum Leo (Karl Malden, irrepressible but decidedly small-time and unmenacing), who is in turn aided/being manipulated by out-of-his-league Anya (Françoise Dorléac in her final role; she died in a car wreck before filming was completed).

The MacGuffin is more diverting than Funeral in Berlin’s – eggs carrying deadly virus(es) stolen from Porton Down (“How are you going to have them, Leo? Scrambled or fried?”) – but such a potentially unnerving scenario is left rather limp. Harry travels from Helsinki to Latvia (cue some whacky rebels – everyone’s whacky in this), gets into scrapes and meets up with Colonel Stok (Oskar Homolka) again, encounters various threats and double-crosses from Leo and Anya, and is guest of Ed Begley’s lunatic oil tycoon General Midwinter in Texas, who plans to bring down the Commies with the aid of his computers and the viruses.

Midwinter: Do you like the sound of gunfire? Me, I love it.

Unfortunately, despite the travelogue nature of the movie, Harry’s rendered largely passive and reactive, particularly so during the much-cited Eisenstein-inspired ice-breaking climax. The picture briefly becomes invested during his stay at Midwinter’s base, with Palmer under pressure and talking for his life (Ken also engineers a nice speechifying scene entirely drowned out by the score).

In outline, Billion Dollar Brain follows Len Deighton’s novel fairly closely, so one might lay the blame at his door, but the reality is that, while on paper the idea of Ken Russell making a spy movie is appealingly off-the-wall, the material suffers from his being unable to disguise his disinterest in the plot and characters. Ken Adam suggested it was “the wrong type of movie for Ken” while Pauline Kael was of the view that “he hurled the audience from one crisis to the next, and things went by so fast that the story got befuddled and nothing seemed to be happening”. There’s a vague straining towards an eccentric, Strangelovian vibe (Begley’s general, who hasn't left Texas in twenty-five years owing to it having "the only truly wholesome air in the world" has a touch of Jack D Ripper about him), but it’s mostly heavy handed rather than sharp.

One can only assume the audience agreed; Billion Dollar Brain’s box office performance was underwhelming, which put the kibosh on planned fourth instalment Horse Under Water (actually the second Palmer novel). Caine’s fond of citing Harry Salzman’s generosity in releasing him from his seven-year contract, but it may have been partly fuelled by the practicality of his star’s vehicle having run out of steam. Caine himself suggested he would have liked to make An Expensive Place to Die, the fifth in Deighton’s “unnamed hero” series, but when he returned in that pair of blighted ‘90s pictures, Deighton’s novels were nowhere in sight.

Agree? Disagree? Mildly or vehemently? Let me know in the comments below.

Comments

You're not only wrong. You're wrong at the top of your voice.

Bad Day at Black Rock (1955)
I’ve seen comments suggesting that John Sturges’ thriller hasn’t aged well, which I find rather mystifying. Sure, some of the characterisations border on the cardboard, but the director imbues the story with a taut, economical backbone.

She was addicted to Tums for a while.

Marriage Story (2019)
(SPOILERS) I don’t tend to fall heavily for Noah Baumbach fare. He’s undoubtedly a distinctive voice – even if his collaborations with Wes Anderson are the least of that director’s efforts – but his devotion to an exclusive, rarefied New York bubble becomes ever more off-putting with each new project. And ever more identifiable as being a lesser chronicler of the city’s privileged quirks than his now disinherited forbear Woody Allen, who at his peak mastered a balancing act between the insightful, hilarious and self-effacing. Marriage Story finds Baumbach going yet again where Woody went before, this time brushing up against the director’s Ingmar Bergman fixation.

You must find the keys for me!

Doctor Who The Keys of Marinus
Most of the criticisms levelled at The Keys of Marinus over the past 50 years have been fair play, and yet it’s a story I return to as one of the more effortlessly watchable of the Hartnell era. Consequently, the one complaint I can’t really countenance is that it’s boring. While many a foray during this fledgling period drags its heels, even ones of undeniable quality in other areas, Marinus’ shifting soils and weekly adventures-in-miniature sustain interest, however inelegant the actual construction of those narratives may be. The quest premise also makes it a winner; it’s a format I have little resistance to, even when manifested, as here, in an often overtly budget-stricken manner.

Doctor Who has dabbled with the search structure elsewhere, most notably across The Key to Time season, and ultimately Marinus’ mission is even more of a MacGuffin than in that sextology, a means to string together what would otherwise be vignettes to little overall coherence…

My name is Dr. King Schultz, this is my valet, Django, and these are our horses, Fritz, and Tony.

Django Unchained (2012)
(MINOR SPOILERS) Since the painful misstep of Grindhouse/Death Proof, Quentin Tarantino has regained the higher ground like never before. Pulp Fiction, his previous commercial and critical peak, has been at very least equalled by the back-to-back hits of Inglourious Basterds and Django Unchained. Having been underwhelmed by his post Pulp Fiction efforts (albeit, I admired his technical advances as a director in Kill Bill), I was pleasantly surprised by Inglourious Basterds. It was no work of genius (so not Pulp Fiction) by any means, but there was a gleeful irreverence in its treatment of history and even to the nominal heroic status of its titular protagonists. Tonally, it was a good fit for the director’s “cool” aesthetic. As a purveyor of postmodern pastiche, where the surface level is the subtext, in some ways he was operating at his zenith. Django Unchained is a retreat from that position, the director caught in the tug between his all-important aesthetic pr…

Have you betrayed us? Have you betrayed me?!

Blake's 7 4.13: Blake

The best you can hope for the end of a series is that it leaves you wanting more. Blake certainly does that, so much so that I lapped up Tony Attwood’s Afterlife when it came out. I recall his speculation over who survived and who didn’t in his Programme Guide (curious that he thought Tarrant was unlikely to make it and then had him turn up in his continuation). Blakefollows the template of previous season finales, piling incident upon incident until it reaches a crescendo.

There are times when I miss the darkness. It is hard to live always in the light.

Blake's 7 4.12: Warlord

The penultimate episode, and Chris Boucher seems to have suddenly remembered that the original premise for the series was a crew of rebels fighting against a totalitarian regime. The detour from this, or at least the haphazard servicing of it, during seasons Three and Four has brought many of my favourite moments in the series. So it comes as a bit of a jolt to suddenly find Avon making Blake-like advances towards the leaders of planets to unite in opposition against the Federation.

Haven’t you ever heard of the healing power of laughter?

Batman (1989)
(SPOILERS) There’s Jaws, there’s Star Wars, and then there’s Batman in terms of defining the modern blockbuster. Jaws’ success was so profound, it changed the way movies were made and marketed. Batman’s marketing was so profound, it changed the way tentpoles would be perceived: as cash cows. Disney tried to reproduce the effect the following year with Dick Tracy, to markedly less enthusiastic response. None of this places Batman in the company of Jaws as a classic movie sold well, far from it. It just so happened to hit the spot. As Tim Burton put it, it was “more of a cultural phenomenon than a great movie”. It’s difficult to disagree with his verdict that the finished product (for that is what it is) is “mainly boring”.

Now, of course, the Burton bat has been usurped by the Nolan incarnation (and soon the Snyder). They have some things in common. Both take the character seriously and favour a sombre tone, which was much more of shock to the system when Burton did it (even…

So you made contact with the French operative?

Atomic Blonde (2017)
(SPOILERS) Well, I can certainly see why Focus Features opted to change the title from The Coldest City (the name of the graphic novel from which this is adapted). The Coldest City evokes a nourish, dour, subdued tone, a movie of slow-burn intrigue in the vein of John Le Carré. Atomic Blonde, to paraphrase its introductory text, is not that movie. As such, there’s something of a mismatch here, of the kind of Cold War tale it has its roots in and the furious, pop-soaked action spectacle director David Leitch is intent on turning it into. In the main, his choices succeed, but the result isn’t quite the clean getaway of his earlier (co-directed) John Wick.

I take Quaaludes 10-15 times a day for my "back pain", Adderall to stay focused, Xanax to take the edge off, part to mellow me out, cocaine to wake me back up again, and morphine... Well, because it's awesome.

The Wolf of Wall Street (2013)
Along with Pain & Gain and The Great Gatsby, The Wolf of Wall Street might be viewed as the completion of a loose 2013 trilogy on the subject of success and excess; the American Dream gone awry. It’s the superior picture to its fellows, by turns enthralling, absurd, outrageous and hilarious. This is the fieriest, most deliriously vibrant picture from the director since the millennium turned. Nevertheless, stood in the company of Goodfellas, the Martin Scorsese film from which The Wolf of Wall Street consciously takes many of its cues, it is found wanting.

I was vaguely familiar with the title, not because I knew much about Jordan Belfort but because the script had been in development for such a long time (Ridley Scott was attached at one time). So part of the pleasure of the film is discovering how widely the story diverges from the Wall Street template. “The Wolf of Wall Street” suggests one who towers over the city like a behemoth, rather than a guy …

Poor Easy Breezy.

Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood (2019)
(SPOILERS) My initial reaction to Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood was mild disbelief that Tarantino managed to hoodwink studios into coming begging to make it, so wilfully perverse is it in disregarding any standard expectations of narrative or plotting. Then I remembered that studios, or studios that aren’t Disney, are desperate for product, and more especially, product that might guarantee them a hit. Quentin’s latest appears to be that, but whether it’s a sufficient one to justify the expense of his absurd vanity project remains to be seen.

Now In Full Color, with a Happier Ending

Search This Blog