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it is finally so absorbing because it plays like a lyrical road odyssey that’s also a detective story.

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

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

I came across this movie very late one night recently and as it was a Connery movie with which I was not familiar I decided to stay with it. Big mistake. It appears to have ideas way above its station and the plot boils down to being about both Political and Corporate interests combining to ensure that Connery's character's peace plan for the Middle East fails. To ensure this a top female assassin (Sharpe) is hired to liquidate Connery. However, such is the clunky nature of the plot, in one scene she actually saves his life when she has ample opportunity to kill him. Given that this is a mid 70s "serious political movie" a downbeat ending is compulsory and this is ensured when Sharpe kills Connery at the movie's climax.I'm guessing any feminists watching this movie appreciated the irony of James Bond being murdered by a beautiful woman.

The remarkable thing about this movie is that it was fully conceived, filmed, and released *before* Anwar Sadat and the Camp David Accords, and, in its own way, echoes the events in its own future. If you are too young to remember these events, then I recommend you look it up in Wikipedia... Then realize that this movie did not follow that history, it preceded it.Not much should be expected of the movie, it is a definite B-movie from Connery's lower-rent period, when he did a lot of doubtful pictures following his "Never Again" appearance in "Diamonds Are Forever", and before his talent, so evident in his early, pre-Bond pictures, was re-recognized by critics and fans alike.It is a decent and effective, if not surprising picture, and Connery himself does an effective job as an Arab leader seeking to end the strife with Israel, against substantial political opposition. At the time, the whole idea of it seemed preposterously far in the future, but in reality, the Camp David Accords were less than 4 years away.

It has an interesting plot, and a political message. Imagine the Saudis sending a man of peace to the UN, to change OPEC. Other than that, it resembles Day of the Jackal in some respects, and Cornelia Sharpe is dazzling. Scenes of New York prior to 9/11 are always poignant, and Connery does a fine job. His "conversion" sparks a multitude of organizations to try to stop him from doing further damage. There is much to look at, and the pace is fast. I enjoyed his pleasure at confronting the UN members from the Mid-East who were outraged by his refusal to parrot the OPEC line. There is always a "next man"... or woman...who has a mission to perform.

(Spoilers ahead) "The Next Man" is a mildly entertaining if totally unlikely story with Sean Connery as a Saudi Arabian emissary to the UN who threatens to disband OPEC and seek peace with Israel. Understandably, he becomes the subject of assassination attempts. Cornelia Sharpe, looking like a photocopy of Faye Dunaway, is an undercover agent who, like a spider, uses sex as a preliminary to devouring her mate. In an early scene she coolly allows Adolfi Celi to suffocate to death with a plastic bag tied around his head while she blithely takes a shower. She, of course, falls seriously in love with Connery and goes through pangs of conscience before doing him in at point-blank rage at the end. Had the film dealt more seriously with the political and dramatic issues at hand, a la Costa Gavras, it could have been much better and not nearly so preposterous. Richard C. Sarafian directed the less-than-brilliant concoction.