Billion Dollar Brain

This is the best by far of series. I have watched it several times and never tire of it. For starters, Michael Caine. Sure. I love James Bond, loved all the various iterations... but I will take Michael Caine's Harry Palmer over all the Bonds. And the films themselves - cynical and absurd, dealing with the cold war much like Kubrick did with Dr. Strangelove. Whereas Bond is more saccharin in its material and doesn't attempt to challenge the worldview of its audience, Harry Palmer plunges right in and some of it is very sharp and on the mark. This film is especially good in that regards.Secondly, the cinematography by Billy Williams. For that alone, this film is simply beautiful to stare at. This is some of the finest, most beautifully composed shots I have ever seen on celluloid. If you are tired of digital and just want to look at the artistry of film, cinematographer Billy Williams gives you a look at Finland's wintry beauty in the 1960's that is simply stunning. It doesn't hurt that Francoise Dorleac, Catherine Deneuve's sister, is featured in many of the shots (she unfortunately died six weeks after shooting in a car accident). Williams also photographed Gandhi (1982), for which he won an Oscar, and On Golden Pond (1981).And third... Ed Begley, father of Ed Begley Jr., playing the crazy Texan Oil CEO who is running his own private army and state - the character, like in Bond films, is bombastic and at times over the top, but unlike Bond villains, never far fetched and perhaps more real than we know. Director Ken Russell surely relishes given the character and the state of Texas crazy religious overtones that are genuinely disturbing in their hellishness. And also thrown into the mix is Karl Malden - who, if you grew up in the 70's, will remember best from the American Express ads.

Madcap cold war Ipcress File (Harry Palmer) sequel done for gags, but well done and with some crisp insights. Oskar Homolka owns this movie, upstaging Malden and Caine routinely. Worth a view but a warning: it's not even trying to have the viewer suspend disbelief. The view of a Texas proto-Nazi oil magnate pushing to overthrow the Russians in Latvia with high tech weapons and lousy humintel is a perfect critique of Americans for the past 50 years. Very entertaining in spots. The Honeywell room sized main frame using tape storage and using punch cards for programs is a wonderful anachronism: priceless technical nonsense with Donald Sutherland as the voice of the Brain.

First off, I love Len Deighton. He's one of the Big Three of spy fiction, along with Littell and Le Carre. There is no Big Four. The very best spy fiction has been written by one of the afore-mentioned three. "Billion Dollar Brain" (BDB) is NOT one of the best, not even close. BDB is the third of the Harry Palmer trilogy, written early in Deighton's career. I don't recommend any of the Harry Palmer books....(but I do strongly recommend the movie version of the other two Palmer books, ""Ipcress File" and "Funeral in Berlin", both staring Michael Caine - skip the BDB movie).The BDB book has little to do with the BDB movie, plotwise, but let me try to summarize the book. Not an easy task. It's about six eggs implanted with a deadly virus which are being pursued by the Ruskies. Who has the eggs now....hard to say. There is a sub-plot, or is it the main plot? It deals with an ultra right wing retired American General who wants to trigger an uprising by the Lavians V the Russians. It's a confused mess.But back to Deighton. Beginning in 1983, he wrote a marvelous trilogy trilogy (not a typo, I'll explain.) The first three books were "Berlin Game", "Mexico Set", " London Match". The next three were "Faith" "(get it now?), "Hope", "Charity". Take a stab at the last three. Anyway, the main plot of these nine books, a trilogy trilogy, concerns a British upper crust family which has a long and respected history with MI-6.....until one of them defects to the other side. A great winter read, hours and hours....

The Kino-Lorber edition of BILLION DOLLAR BRAIN seems to be the exact same transfer as the old MGM/UA DVD edition, with one important exception. Unlike the MGM/UA DVD, which acknowledged that this is the edited version of the movie (missing about two minutes of footage, mostly involving the presence of a Beatles song on the soundtrack -- the rights for which on a DVD release the home video distributors were unwilling to pay) by listing the running time as 108 minutes, this disc's packaging claims a running time of 111 minutes. It's a small error but an annoying one. Otherwise, the transfer looks good, the letterboxing captures the Panavision image nicely (and Helsinki and the surrounding Finnish countryside look gorgeous throughout) and the sound is certainly loud and robust all the way through, unusual for a DVD release of a movie of this vintage.

My one-star rating isn't for the film itself but for the horrible standard def version now streaming on Amazon. They haven't sold a standard def TV in ten years, yet Amazon still streams some titles in standard. On HDTV, between the standard def and the incorrect aspect ratio of the image, it's like watching a movie through a fish tank. The picture is fuzzy, grainy and virtually unwatchable. Hulu and Netflix now stream everything in HD, why not Amazon? If they stream in HD, people with standard def TVs will still see a sharp image. But streaming in standard at this point is like preferring Betamax over Bluray.

For me, anything with Michael Caine is worth watching and in this case, I was not disappointed.Beware, this is Region A only.

Michael Caine se vuelve a meter en el papel de Harry Palmer para dar vida a éste agente secreto creado por Len Deighton y lo hace en una película entretenida, a ratos divertida e irónica. Una visión particular de los años de la guerra fría y el pop-art de los 60. La calidad de visionado buena y el doblaje original en castellano muy bien, lo prefiero a los re-doblajes 5.1 de ahora. Recomendada para pasar un buen rato.

Interesante tercera entrega de las intrigas en que se ve envuelto el agente del Servicio Secreto británico Harry Palmer (las anteriores fueron "Ipcress" y "Funeral en Berlín" luego vendrían "El Expreso de Pekin" y "Medianoche en San Petersburgo que es un poco la antítesis de 007 James Bond puesto que Palmer esta mal pagado y mantiene una vida un tanto sórdida como detective privado al comienzo de la acción.Por lo demás la película dirigida por el entonces en boga, Ken Russell ("Tommy") tiene en el gran Michael Caine el mas ajustado intérprete que lo fue en todos los films del agente Palmer, secundado por el gran Karl Malden y Françoise Dorleac (hermana de Catherine Deneuve y triste y prematuramente desaparecida) que junto a Ed Begley y Óscar Homolka ponen el adecuado contrapunto interpretativo. Muy buena fotografía (POR FIN EDITADA RESPETANDO EL PANAVISION ORIGINAL!!!) y banda sonora, en fin, resumiendo un excelente film de espionaje y aventuras.

As a mainstream movie Ken Russell did for the general public, this spy movie is quite a pleasant treat. Although the script drags a bit in the middle, when the character is in Russia and where I think it could have been shortened (ex: scene in the train with the Russian women), Ken Russell gives a mysterious atmosphere in this movie.Filled with symbolism, great use of music (ex; Sibelius), and paintings, Ken Russell gives some good tension and suspense in his scenes. Why, instead of overfilling some with dialogues, he simply lets the music and the character's acting do the talking (ex: when Harry and Leo Newbigen find out the identity of the spy they have to kill). As for his camerawork, it enriches the action of certain scenes (ex: the fight between Harry and Anya) and also shows techniques that really precede the birth of the steadycam.Also, one of Ken Russell's greatest strengths is that he knows how to direct his actors and get great acting out of them. As such, I have to say that I was very impressed by Francoise Dorleac, whose performance was just marvellous and was another proof that Ken Russell's women characters are strong and very independent. It's very sad to think that this movie was one of the last performances Francoise gave before her death. What would have happened if she had never had that horrible car accident?In the end, this movie, although not one of his most personal projects, is a treat for Ken Russell fans and for moviegoers that may wish to see a spy movie not overkilled with computer visuals.

Una variante del cine de espías, con uno de los productores de la saga Bond en sus comienzos y con un reparto estelar de la época con Michael Caine, Karl Malden, Ed Begley, Oskar Homolka, Françoise Dorléac y Donald Sutherland