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A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

It's a movie as timely as it is provocative and amazingly, for much of its running time, it is weirdly funny.

A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

The story-telling is good with flashbacks.The film is both funny and heartbreaking. You smile in a scene and get a soulcrushing revelation in the next.

Under the spreading chestnut tree When I held you on my knee, we were happy as can be Under the spreading chestnut tree.Under the spreading chestnut tree I'll kiss you and you'll kiss me Oh how happy we will be Under the spreading chestnut tree" They say the chestnut tree symbolizes honesty ,charity and justice.So this song which could seem somewhat irrelevant over the cast and credits and is heard again in the last scene (sung by a school children choir).And if the message is not clear enough ,the letters of the credits are written on small cubes and when they are in trouble,Caine and his wife take the pseudos of Mr Trapp and Maria,cause they've seen "the sound of music" four or five times with their abducted child . Many things will remind you of "the man who knew too much" (essentially second version) ,even a song plays the role of "que sera sera" .A good private joke even mentions Sean Connery ,future co-star of Caine in "the man who would be king" In spite of the run of the mill plot,Don Siegel makes the best of it ,with strong scenes and an accelerated tempo :the opening sequence ,with the "military" men, gives the jitter ;Delphine Seyrig,an extremely talented French actress famous for her parts in Demy's Truffaut's and Bunuel's movies finds here her first part of a villainess.Hear how she smoothly speaks!She was fluent in English so she was not dubbed! ,fortunately ! Unlike so many veterans trapped in the seventies ,Don "body snatchers" Siegel carried on with exciting movies:the stunning "beguiled" -which tops both "Harry" and "Escape from Alcatraz" which are not flabby stuff either-"the Shootist" with a terminally-ill John Wayne .

This is a very odd film. The plot is extremely convoluted: a gang abducts the son of one man (Michael Caine) with no money, in order to obtain diamonds from the government (via Donald Pleasance). Pleasance then refuses the diamonds to Caine (thus proving the gang should have chosen someone with money) who then steals them and travels to France with a James-Bond-esque suitcase. Meanwhile the gang is meticulously trying to implicate Caine in the abduction (for some unclear reason) which involves killing their own female gang member and framing Caine. But when he is captured by the police they help him escape...If this were not convoluted enough, the writers obviously try to lighten the tone of its harrowing subject matter (child abduction and torture) with some comedy moments which seem very misplaced.The whole "implicate Caine" subplot is particularly strange and seems more to inject a bit of lurid sensationalism (nude snaps and dead girl in bed) and to provide an excuse for a poorly executed escape sequence. I'm not even sure why the capture/escape is staged in France apart from the fact that French cops have guns and therefore Caine can be shot at. This brief French excursion unnecessarily causes another poorly staged sequence; his need to get back into England.One also wonders why the girl would allow herself to be photographed etc. Planting evidence incriminating your own guilt is hardly a good idea, and she must surely have smelt a rat? All this shot in the unimaginative fashion of a typically gritty 1970s British film (with typical music too) which makes us think more of a long episode of THE SWEENEY than anything cinematic (compare the feeble pursuit on the underground here with that in the FRENCH CONNECTION which was obviously the inspiration for it).

I usually enjoy Michael Caine's films, but though this one started promising enough, its second half made the overall effect disappointing. The most dissatisfying aspect was how Tarrant and his wife worked out exactly where their son was being held on the basis of a phone call from the Brighton area and the villain's reference to a "pleasant farm" and two "rather unusual windows"; this defied belief.Other contributors have already noted one witty reference, to "Sean Connery"; there is another, in that the Tarrants rendezvous outside a cinema where "Battle of Britain" (starring Caine) is showing.And wasn't that Richard Attenborough playing the jeweller visited by the two men from New Scotland Yard; this role appears not to feature in the filmographies I've glanced at.

Michael Caine plays 'major John Tarrant' who's son is kidnapped as a direct consequence of his job as an MI6 operator. Based on a novel by Clive Egleton, this above average thriller sees Caine in the kind of role he can play in his sleep; as the hero (with the wavy fringe) seemingly in control of his emotions, speaking just about as much as 'Dirty Harry' and finally when confronting the bad guys; running amuck.