- That's a lousy job. I should have stayed in the army then nothing would have happened! Major John Terrent is a British intelligence agent whose son is abducted by unknown people and demanded for the latter a ransom in the form of a bag of precious stones that is kept by Terrent’s immediate superiors. Naturally, high-ranking officials are not going to pay a ransom for a little boy. They are not going to do this because it is not their child and moreover, Terrent himself looks and behaves surprisingly calmly, and therefore the immediate superiors of the hero begin to suspect the latter of a criminal conspiracy to obtain precious stones. That's just collusion as such there is no, but try to explain it to these stubborn sheep, and therefore John decides to steal diamonds because the life of his son is much more valuable than work, but will he succeed in this adventure, and most importantly, is the son of Major Terrent still alive?
Michael Kane is an undeniably talented and charming actor who has given the world many films with his participation. And even though this actor never acted in films about the adventures of James Bond, for me this man was and remains the number one spy in the world of cinema. And naturally, from a film about spies with the participation of this actor, and who positions himself as smart and serious, you expect that he will take the viewer seriously. You wait ten minutes, half an hour, an hour, and the film does not think to take the viewer seriously or intrigue the latter. The film just goes slowly promising that in a minute the spectacle will begin, there will be chases, and shootouts, and the actors will finally begin to play, but the film ends and the only feeling left after watching is that the viewer was cruelly deceived and slipped instead of a delicious candy - a wrapper.
So what's the problem with this movie? You won't believe it, but it's in the plot. Perhaps it is only possible that the original source was an interesting and intelligent reading, although I have great doubts about this, but the film turned out to be nothing. First, the idea does not stand up to any criticism, because the criminals kidnap the son of the main character on an abandoned base pretending to be a military man. The question immediately arises – why such complexity? Why, I'm sorry, was it necessary to dress up in the military and wait for children at an abandoned base? What if they hadn't come? The kidnappers would look like complete idiots. Why would you kidnap a former soldier’s child and expect them to get a ransom? How small is the chance that John Terrent will go against his superiors or that he will be given gems to pay the ransom? I’m not saying that the spy network is run by someone whose IQ is low enough and who can’t put two and two together without a pen and a piece of paper. Secondly, there are too many characters in this film who first appear on the screen, do something, talk to someone, and only after five minutes the viewer learns about their social status. Of course, in the book, this approach works with hurrah, but from the film, the viewer primarily expects characters who will be able to interest him. The characters of this picture do not intrigue, because their dialogues are template, the characters are poorly spelled out or not spelled out at all, and the actors themselves are stingy in emotions and therefore it seems that we were not living people, but wooden dolls that depict them. In fact, nothing happens in this film. No, of course, there will be a couple of chases and even a place for a shootout, but they are set quite poorly and do not cause special feelings. It is only possible that if the whole film consisted of this kind of shootout and chase, it would be able to smooth out sharp corners, and so this only causes boredom.
I would not say that this film did not cause any emotions in your obedient, it caused them. The first such point was the “Frad reservation” that Sean Connery was a Russian spy. The second was the fact that in the cinema “Dominion”, where the main characters met, they showed the film “Battle for Britain”, in which Michael Caine played the main role. But again, these moments are not able to brighten the taste of the bitter pill, which turned out to be “Black Mill” and even though nothing really bad was noticed in the film, but there was nothing good in the film, and therefore I would still recommend refraining from watching, thank you.
4 out of 10