Watch Billion Dollar Brain For Free

the audience applauded

Excellent, Without a doubt!!

Captivating movie !

A very feeble attempt at affirmatie action

Enjoyable if dated, they are still using punch cards to program their computers!, espionage thriller with a solid cast. Caine is cool as ice as the reluctant protagonist casting a jaundiced eye on all the shenanigans going on around him. Francoise Dorleac is a lovely mystery woman although her character seems to vanish at several key points in the film when it feels like she would be there. This might be because she was killed in a traffic accident while the picture was still filming necessitating a rethinking to still make her completed work usable. She's quite magnetic, her resemblance to her sister Catherine Deneuve is striking, and her death cut short a career that was already very successful in France and was starting to expand worldwide. Ed Begley also stands out, having a great time as a crazy old coot. Subtle he ain't but memorable for sure.

Harry Palmer is a character played by Michael Caine who is very much unlike James Bond. While Bond is amazingly athletic, sexy and,...well...PERFECT, Palmer is a spy who is none of these---just very lucky! "Billion Dollar Brain" begins with Harry no longer working for MI-6 but is now a private eye--albeit one with no clients. When the agency tries to get him to return, he's insistent on remaining a free agent--and soon gets an odd case involving making a delivery. The recipient turns out to be an old associate (Karl Malden)--one who is working for a VERY eccentric megalomaniac Texan (Ed Begley Senior). Apparently, Begley insists that the Soviet Union is about to fall apart--all they need is some assistance from him and his private army. However, his intelligence is wrong--all the information his agent (Malden) is giving him is made up and Malden is pocketing the money supposedly going to pay the insurgents in Latvia--though there are NONE! When Harry tries to tell the nutty Texan, he won't listen--his computer (the billion dollar brain) tells him the plan WILL succeed. What's Harry to do? What about the potential of this nut starting WWIII? And what of Harry's Soviet friends--such as the rather avuncular Colonel (Oskar Homolka)? The film has some good acting going for it. Caine is wonderful and although Begley's part is far from subtle, his scene-chewing is captivating. The only real serious shortcoming in the film is the unlikeliness of it all--and the computer angle certainly doesn't help. But, if you turn off your brain and just watch, then it does deliver solid undemanding entertainment.By the way, on a sad note, this would be Françoise Dorléac's last film. The pretty blonde actress was a large part of this, her last film. Shortly after shooting was completed, she was killed in a road accident. And, incidentally, she was the older sister of Catherine Deneuve.

This should have been so much better but it appears that Mr Russell may have paid more attention to filming the stunning snowy landscapes than to his actors. Michael Caine is, of course, laid back at the best of times but here he seems allowed to almost walk through the part. He would be so much more alert and aware in Collinson's Italian Job two years later. The storyline is OK but for me this switches from stunning landscape to plodding acting and the tale, as a result, never gets properly told. Francoise Dorleac also seems to be lacking some verve, she certainly seems reluctant to show us any of her lovely body. Maybe she knew she was about to die, tragically. For whatever reason this may be a decent enough spy movie and a decent enough performance for Caine fans but this is not vintage Ken Russell. Maybe like me he got a bit bored with it all.

Michael Caine as Harry Palmer comes up against the "Billion Dollar Brain" in this 1967 film also starring Karl Malden, Oscar Homolka, Francoise Dorleac and Ed Begley, directed by Ken Russell.Harry is dragged back into MI-5, this time to get biological warfare out of the hands of the enemy. The enemy in this case is the lunatic Texas oilman Midwinter (Ed Begley) who's funding his own army to beat down Communism. He's planning on attacking Latvia, and one of the men working for him, Newbigen (Karl Malden) is controlling the movements of 30 agents working there. Except there aren't - Newbigen is pocketing the money. That's 30 agents at $30,000 a week. Midwinter also has these enormous computers that have tons of paper coming out of them and get fed info with punch cards - oh, the memories! Bizarre and very sixties in its style, "Billion Dollar Brain" is filled with wild camera angles and lunatic crowd scenes, as well as some gorgeous Finnish scenery. The finale is fantastic.It's all completely insane and yet futuristic - the biological warfare, the bad intelligence, the Texas warmonger - let's face it, you could have those elements in a film today and they would all seem pretty timely.The anchor for all this madness is Michael Caine, whose underplayed Harry is laid back as he tries to figure out who's working for whom. Homolka is great as Stok, and Ed Begley portrays the mad Midwinter way over the top, which is totally appropriate for such a character. Smiling Karl Malden is effective as a man in love who only cares about getting his.Fast-moving and enjoyable.