THE FOURTH PROTOCOL
A film review by Mark R. Leeper
Copyright 1987 Mark R. Leeper
Capsule review: Pierce Brosnan is a Soviet agent and
Michael Caine is a British agent trying to track him down.
This is a good "spy-procedure" sort of thriller that is just
a bit too much like Frederick Forsyth's previous DAY OF THE
JACKAL.
Frederick Forsyth writes good suspense stories about political intrigue. He is best known for THE DAY OF THE JACKAL and THE ODESSA FILE. They are clearly written and tense thrillers, though if the truth be known, there is a certain sameness about them. While there are major consequences to what is happening, his stories really come down to a sort of chessgame between two men, one good and one evil. Nobody else is really important in the story. Just about everyone else is a prop. THE FOURTH PROTOCOL is a new film based on a novel of the same name by Frederick Forsyth.
THE DAY OF THE JACKAL dealt with a lone assassin in the pay of political extremists whose mission is to kill Charles DeGaulle. We see how the assassin works and thinks. We also see a police investigator, one who is not altogether popular with his superiors, and we see how he is able to discover an amazing amount of information about the assassin. And that information, together with a modicum of dumb luck, are sufficient to avert the assassination. With minor substitutions, we have the same story here. Instead of a political extremist group, we have a rogue general in Soviet intelligence. The general sends a sort of assassin, Petrofsky (played by Pierce Brosnan), to head up an operation in Britain. Trying to uncover the operation is John Preston, played by an aging Michael Caine. Preston takes his orders these days from an officious supervisor played by Julian Glover, who seems to make a career of playing unlikeable officials (including Breen in FIVE MILLION YEARS TO EARTH). Only this time, the assassin's mission is not to kill a single man.
THE FOURTH PROTOCOL is solidly acted with Caine a likeable if independent-minded agent. Pierce Brosnan is not very good at showing emotion, but as emotionless killers he is just fine. There are a host of other familiar faces including, I think (and someone can correct me if I am wrong), the same actor who plays Max Headroom, in this film playing an obnoxious American. As suspense films go, THE FOURTH PROTOCOL is not the most cerebral, but it is several cuts about American suspense films like BEVERLY HILLS COP. Give it a low +2 on the -4 to +4 scale.
Mark R. Leeper
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