Midnight in St. Petersburg
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Michael CaineDVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Subtitled); English (Original Language)
Format: Color
Running Time: 90 unknown-units
Published: 2002
Audience Rating: Unrated
Studio: Lions Gate Films
Movie Reviews of Midnight in St. Petersburg
Movie Review: The best of the Harry Palmer series
Summary: 4 Stars
British thriller writer Len Deighton started writing the Harry Palmer books back in the 60s during the "spy boom" initiated by Ian Fleming and John Le Carre. Harry Palmer was sometimes called the "thinking man's James Bond," based on the way Michael Caine tipped a pair of plain brown National Health specs across his nose to make him look more intellectual. Also the plots of the novels sometimes aspired to achieve the kind of complexity and moodiness of Le Carre's, with cheating wives, duplicitous bosses, the planting of double and triple agents, and the legacy of long-ago sins that come back to haunt our hero on present life.
Caine was more of a party boy than the books' Harry Palmer but he gave the first films their energy. Women were drawn to him including the incredible Eva Renzi and the tragic Francoise Dorleac. That said, no one was really that upset when, after three movies, Caine quit the role even though he had two more movies to film under his contract with Saltzsman. The three films (FUNERAL IN BERLIN, THE IPCRESS FILE, and BILLION DOLLAR BRAIN) had done okay, but it was clear that they were not in the same running as the Bond films as far as a potential franchise went.
Finally, in the 1990s, during a lull in Caine's career, he made the final two pictures about Harry Palmer, and nobody even noticed. Actually it might be more profitable to think of them as good Jason Connery vehicles, for Connery Jr. appears in both, claiming to have had a Dad in British intelligence (!!!) but playing Russian, and he's terrific in the part, menacing, sexy, and giving off showers of sparks every time he's on screen. (In the first one he's joined by Mia Sara, whom he married.) In MIDNIGHT IN ST. PETERSBURG, we feel the weight of the whole Cold War collapsing into an unruly capitalism as Caine, looking gaunt and ghastly, even in the comforting 3/4 raincoat Harry never leaves home without, stumbles around the former Leningrad searching for a plot. The movie comes and goes in bits and pieces, as though every scene was filmed without recourse to a proper script and the actors were just winging it on the fly, with lots of Russian flags flapping around them, but you wonder if they ever went to Russia or were they just in the studio. That said, it's a fabulously entertaining movie with great lashings of high style, fun, and espionage double crosses. Jason Connery, in his Russian chav avatar, will curdle your borscht and put hair on your chest.
Summary of Midnight in St. Petersburg
The unstoppable Harry Palmer is back in Len Deighton's " Midnight in St. Petersburg".Similar DVD Movies
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