We all know Freric Forsyth supposedly wrote great thrillers. Sadly I'm not sure this is the case in this instance. There were too many moments in the film where I wanted to say "what? that's never going to happen!!" Point in fact would be expecting everyone to believe that there was a nuclear accident in a housing estate.At 1.5kTon, it's only a small bomb. They say in the film the crater will only be "2 mile across" so investigators will rumble a rat strait up. Then assembling fissile material with out a containment or even protective clothing?? your kidding me right?Also the premise that an atom bomb will go off by mistake. Atom bombs are incredibly difficult to explode unless you get stuff to happen just right. So that is a plot fault for starters. Sheesh...I liked the ideas that all the agent managers were self serving prats, though Forsyth's portrayal of all the Russian characters as cold automatons is a bit dated, probably even by 1987 cold war standard. Michael Cain doing his best "Micheal Cain" is well worth a star or two though.A final thought... Mr Mackenzie, if you are going to show a woman with magnificent breasts topless, allow her to sit or stand in the shot. Large breasts prone do not do them selves any justice at all.a.

Frederick Forsythe is always a reliable and successful writer, and many of his spy thriller novels have been made into movies. I would guess that Forsythe provided the inspiration for Tom Clancy and the people who wrote this script. There's quite a bit of technical stuff involved in this story of a KGB spy who is sent to England to detonate a nuclear device at the USAF base at Baywaters, England, the base I always thought was at Bayswater. No matter.The KGB man is Pearse Brosnan and the British counter-terrorism agent who tracks him is Michael Caine, redoing his Palmer number from "The Ipcress File," only with more raucous animation.It's pretty involving. After all, the stakes are high. The explosion will devastate everything within a two-mile radius and kill upwards of 5,000 people.And there are exciting action scenes, especially a van in pursuit of a motorcycle and the inevitable final shoot out, with the wounded Brosnan's fingertip straining to reach the button that will detonate the fiendish device.There are a couple of types of villains in movies like this. One is the suave and debonair type -- George Sanders or James Mason, maybe, in "North by Northwest." Then there's the jocular, almost likable type of killer, always a smile and a wisecrack, like John Travolta in "Broken Arrow" or Jack Nicholson as The Joker. Finally, there's the type that Brosnan fits into in this film -- determined, distant, touched by passions perhaps but only by selfish ones, and absolutely determined. It might be the assassin in "The Day of the Jackal" or Arnold in "The Terminator." Brosnan is actually quite good. He has a pretty face and is capable of an icy demeanor, the kind that brushes away the caressing hand of a pretty neighbor because she doesn't fit into his plans. And there has never been a movie that was torpedoed by the presence of Michal Caine. Caine also gets a bonus point for doing a fine drunk. He's hilarious. He wobbles when he walks and his voice gets high and cracks.I've seen this twice. The first time made more of an impression. The second time, oddly, I found myself getting confused about some of the intricacies of the plot. But it was still enjoyable.

I hadn't seen this for ages. Then it was given away free with the Daily Mail.It really has aged well. The plot is still believable. Just substitute Islamic terrorists for Russian ones. Caine was brilliant and doing his 'laser' style acting in all the close ups. Something he doesn't bother with in his many pot boilers. I have to agree with some of the other posters. It really should have been promoted as Harry Palmer's midlife crisis. He would have developed just like this. The hero in the book reads like an ex-Para version of Freddie Forsythe. Caine makes the role his own and adds his own interpretation. Another of my favourites Pierce Brosnan acts his heart out too, as the stone killer Petrofsky. The Ian Richardson and Anton Rogers scene has to be a career best for both of them. Only a side plot but absolutely brilliant.

Frederick Forsyth's bestselling novel is here brought to the big screen with an all-star cast, but despite occasional moments of excitement it is not a film that genuinely gets the blood pumping. While the intricate build-up of detail and suspense made the book absorbing, in the film it merely creates a cold, dry and rather plodding atmosphere. The film has an old-hat feel to it, for it pursues a storyline that has been done to death over the years. If you think about it, we've seen stories like this countless times: Rod Steiger plotting to blow up Parliament in "Hennessy"; Edward Fox plotting to assassinate De Gaulle in "Day Of The Jackal"; Bruce Dern planning a terrorist attack on the Superbowl in "Black Sunday"; Steven Berkoff wanting to decimate an American air base with an atomic bomb in "Octopussy". This time, in "The Fourth Protocol", it is the turn of Pierce Brosnan to carry out yet another despicable plan against the civilised world. Genre addicts will probably enjoy the film, but for the majority of us it's a tired case of more of the same.Secret agent John Preston (Michael Caine) leads a raid on the apartment of an idealistic government bureaucrat, George Berenson (Anton Rogers). In Berenson's safe, Preston discovers some top-secret documents containing sensitive information about NATO activities in Britain. When confronted, Berenson claims that he has been passing the information on to a South African contact, but to his horror his South African "contact" turns out to be a Russian spy who has been forwarding the information to Moscow. As high-ranking Secret Service official Sir Nigel Irvine (Ian Richardson) tells Berenson: "you've undermined NATO.... perhaps irretrievably". Meanwhile, in snowbound Russia, deadly and highly decorated soldier Major Valeri Petrofsky (Pierce Brosnan) is briefed to carry out an audacious mission that could bring NATO to its knees. Petrofsky comes to Britain posing as a hard-working, unmarried model citizen and promptly buys a house that backs onto an American air base. Gradually he sets into motion his chilling plan, which involves triggering a nuclear explosion from his house, disguising his act to appear like a terrible accident that occurred at the base, thus strengthening the calls for NATO to be disbanded. Preston races against the clock to stop Petrofsky before his deplorable plan becomes a devastating reality.The cast perform decently enough, though there seems to be a certain degree of indifference, or perhaps unenthusiasm, from some of the stars. Ian Richardson probably has the best of it (he has a suggestive, sinister tone of voice and shifty eyes that make him perfect for these cloak-and-dagger roles), while Caine makes an amiable enough hero and Brosnan a fairly believable villain. Others fare slightly worse, like Ned Beatty as a Russian official with an over-prominent American accent, and Julian Glover as a bad-tempered Secret Service bigwig whose attempts to evoke anger would barely trouble a child, let alone his adult colleagues. John Mackenzie directs adequately but unremarkably, allowing the jigsaw pieces of plot to slot into place in a by-the-numbers fashion. The very concept of a nuclear strike within Britain is quite disturbing and exciting on its own terms, but the film never really sets the pulse fluttering. Some might argue that this kind of low-key, realistic approach provides a worthwhile contrast to the extravagance and excesses of a James Bond movie, and they'd have a point, but there's something just a little too mechanical and familiar about "The Fourth Protocol" for my liking.