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Such a frustrating disappointment

It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

The tone of this movie is interesting -- the stakes are both dramatic and high, but it's balanced with a lot of fun, tongue and cheek dialogue.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

Rogue spies try to undermine the Fourth Protocol, which is a secret agreement between the USA, Britain and Russia to cease smuggling nuclear weapons into their respective countries. A Soviet agent is sent to the UK to stage a nuclear accident that could be blamed on the Americans and set off a chain reaction of events to unbalance this stand-off.The Fourth Protocol is based on a novel written by Frederick Forsyth. I have never read it but have read others by this author. His style focuses on the intricate detail of the spy/politics of his thrillers, while his characters contrastingly always seem to be really cardboard, with very little recognisably human about them. With this in mind it's not too surprising that The Day of the Jackal was his most successful book, seeing as the very blankness of the central character was an actual important plot point. But usually this weakness in characterisation is more noticeable. The Fourth Protocol is a quite typical Forsyth spy thriller, in that it has a fairly detailed plot and paper thin characters. Michael Caine phones it in as a Harry Palmer type spy who doesn't play by the rules. It's a quite weak and clichéd character and to be honest Caine doesn't bring much to the table with this one. Pierce Brosnan, on the other hand, is pretty good as the cold Soviet killer. Like in Day of the Jackal, it's this villain who is the more interesting when set alongside the dull heroes, meaning that its actually the bad guy whom we want to succeed, which I'm sure could not have exactly been the original intention. Unlike Caine, Brosnan is playing against type and certainly makes better work of what he is given and is certainly the best thing about the movie. On the whole, this is a pretty standard spy film, with nothing very distinctive about it. Despite its generic nature, it is quite enjoyable though.

At this stage of his career Pierce Brosnan was only known to me for his part in Remington Steele which was a fairly light role.In fact James Bond is a fairly harmless character compared to the ruthless agent he plays in this film. The urgency of his acting is the feature of this film.Caine's character is engaging but fails to keep pace with Brosnan's Petrofsky.I watched this on cable television in my hotel and was guessing throughout what year it might be by the devices used and cars driven.Another chilling role was the authoritative Sir Nigel Irvine played by the late Ian Richardson who dresses down the gormless character Anton Rogers plays "a treat." As Richardson rates amongst my top 5 actors it was a very enjoyable part of the film for me.Out of interest John Hurt, Alan Bates, Humphrey Bogart and Edward Woodward would be the other four.

There is always a dilemma for the spectator who knows the literary work: the book vs the film. I understand that it is almost impossible to convert the whole book with its complexity to the movie, but still some important moments from the Fosyth's novel are missing (and most of the story features are grossly simplified). However it's still an ordinary spy-game film, well directed, with good casting, not reaching over the other ones produced in late 80'. Violental and sexual content was added for effect. The female character (Irina) appeared in the story only for such purpose (but I'm not blaming the creators for that - there has to be at least one female in let's say "bigger role", don't you think?).If you know the book, don't expect a bigger excitement. If you don't know the book, don't expect a bigger excitement either...

I'm a big fan of Michael Caine's Len Deighton films - 'The Ipcress File', 'Funeral in Berlin' and 'Billion Dollar Brain' - even *if* the films got worse as they went along.Even though it's based on a Forsyth book, it's practically a 'return to form' for Harry Palmer - a conceit that's easily swallowed if you allow that Sgt. Palmer might have to assume more than one paper identity over the course of his career. Sir Michael is in top form here, as is Pierce Brosnan and one of my favorite British actors, Ian Richardson of 'House of Cards' fame.In fact, it's an altogether plausible thriller - until you get to the American actors. Sure, Ned Beatty and Joanna Cassidy are great actors - but whoever thought that Russian Intelligence agents, save for Brosnan, should sport American accents should be forced to spend a month in some inarticulate American suburb. It almost ruined an otherwise good film. When the round and blustered vowels were rolling out of Mr. Beatty's mouth, I had to wonder if the film were meant to be a dig at American influence over the UK, much like those xenophobic Japanese monster movies - Godzilla, etc. It was just a bit of a stumbling block to try to paint these Americans as Russians, when they weren't *trying* very hard to be Russians.A plus for this film was that it tried, somewhat, to depict the preparations that Brosnan had to make as an enemy agent. Not as meticulous as 'The Day of the Jackal', mind you, but it was on course. I recommend it to fans of cerebral, non-glamourous spy films.Harry Palmer is back, sort of.