Like the man said you can't go home again and in most cases you shouldn't even try but as we all know Michael Caine is so afraid of winding up broke he'd even black up to play a spear carrier in a remake of Zulu. Although Caine is still the Harry Palmer of The Ipress File, Funeral In Berlin etc, Len Deighton didn't write so much as FADE IN on this one and all I can say is he must have got some serious wedge for the use of his creation. The plot, if you can call it that, needn't detain us, suffice it to say there is lots of shooting, blowing up and stuff of that ilk and about once every other Fall you can actually tell who is who and what side they're on. See it if you must.

This was my kind of spy movie...really bad bad guys...really sexy sexpots...car chases...boat chases...mysterious trains crossing hostile borders and the worst gang of lousy shots you ever saw. They manage to dispatch any number of car windows but not very many people. But then it's hard to make a two hour movie if everybody dies in the first confrontation. Michael Caine is, well, Michael Caine. The plot is quite silly but that adds to its appeal. And there are great scenes in London, St. Petersberg and Siberia. The film captures the disorganized chaos of daily life in Russia and the devil may care attitudes of most Russians. (I've flown domestic routes on Aeroflot a couple of times. Believe me, the hilarious sequence in the movie of the flight to Irkutsk is not that much of an exaggeration.) It's probably more of a spoof than a spy thriller. But it's a damned good movie!

Although it's always a pleasure to watch Michael Caine -- even in stinkers such as "Blame It On Rio" -- there was little fun in this lame attempt at resurrecting the under-paid and melancholy British agent of the 1960s Harry Palmer. "Bullet to Beijing" has holes in the plot you could drive the Trans-Siberian Express through, with little of the humor and none of the style of "The Ipcress File" or "Funeral in Berlin". Poor Harry deserved better than this.

Return of Harry Palmer is not as bad as expected and is occasionally amusing. The fact that I can only recall a funny car chase scene with falling apart Russian cars is ominous, though. Someone mentioned a boat chase and I vaguely remember it although what it was about, I don't know. Certainly, it's sell out to modernity with violent shoot-outs and deaths seems incongruous to the originals. palmer only shot one person the entire trilogy, If I recall correctly.The Palmer of those films was something of a blank page. An ironic and detached observer of the self interest around him, surviving on a combination of quick wit, luck and a lack of an ideological axe to grind. His inability to be tempted into corruption at various stages was surprising seeing as he was originally a tacky fraudster in the army but perhaps it's unwise to try and do an analysis of comic book characters, they're basically tosh. The Palmer of 'Bullet' has lost that sixties cool and it's hard to recognise him. He's more like an ex-football or pool hall manager with a drink problem or simply Caine being more his working class self. The effect is rather curious viewing, whimsical but rather sad, as cinema itself is in decline nowadays. Some of the old stalwarts remain, such as Harry meeting 'old friends' who turn out to have no qualms in dispensing with him altogether in the terminal sense. The sequel fizzles out altogether. 'Bullet To Beijing' is only to be viewed as a last resort, that is you have been made redundant, your wife has left you and your TV license is about to expire with no money left in the kitty to renew it.