THE SAINT
A film review by Scott Renshaw
Copyright 1997 Scott Renshaw
(Paramount/Rysher) Starring: Val Kilmer, Elisabeth Shue, Rabe Serbedzija, Valery Nikolaev. Screenplay: Jonathan Hensleigh, Wesley Strick. Producers: David Brown, Robert Evans, William J. MacDonald, Mace Neufeld. Director: Phillip Noyce. MPAA Rating: PG-13 (profanity, violence, drug use, adult themes) Running Time: 117 minutes. Reviewed by Scott Renshaw.
I figure it happened something like this: in the wake of MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE's impressive box office performance, the development executives at Paramount were tossing around plot ideas for the sequel. After coming up with a couple of promising possibilities, they decided it would be a shame to let one of them go to waste. "So what other properties do we own?" asks Executive #1. "Um, I think we have 'The Saint'," answers Executive #2. So they took the script, recovered Ethan Hunt's miracle-working PowerBook from the prop room, and lo and behold, when Val Kilmer opted not to climb back inside Batman's latex, another potential franchise was born. That was the idea, anyway, but things tend not to run smoothly when Kilmer is involved. Left to his own devices in a story that was fragmented to begin with, Kilmer turns THE SAINT into two hour narcissistic orgy.
Kilmer stars as Simon Templar, an internationally infamous thief-for-hire and master of disguise who travels the world under the names of Catholic saints. On an assignment in Moscow, Simon encounters Ivan Tretiak (Rabe Serbedzija), a billionaire oil tycoon intent on ruling a now-unstable Russia. Tretiak hires Simon to steal a top-secret formula for cold fusion developed by American scientist Dr. Emma Russell (Elisabeth Shue), and The Saint begins one of his characteristic seductions in pursuit of the big payoff which will allow him to retire. What he does not expect is that he will develop genuine feelings for Emma, complicating his mission considerably. When Simon tries to have it both ways, both he and Emma end up on the Russian most wanted list, running for their lives through the streets and sewers of Moscow.
Jonathan Hensleigh's back-story for THE SAINT completely abandons the character as created by Leslie Charteris, re-creating Simon Templar as a nameless orphan subjected to guilt and cruelty in a Catholic orphanage. It is a nice set-up for a story about an enigmatic loner. Unfortunately, it has nothing to do with the character as played by Val Kilmer. There isn't much haunted, complex history in his characterization; Kilmer spends most of the film looking tremendously self-satisfied, posing behind each disguise and purring every accent. Sure it's fun watching Kilmer play a variety of eccentric characters, and you can bet that he knows it. When the film takes a sudden shift in tone near the conclusion, turning into a light-hearted caper for the final ten minutes, it actually seems as though director Phillip Noyce (CLEAR AND PRESENT DANGER) threw up his hands and decided to let THE SAINT become the film Kilmer had been acting in for the previous 100 minutes.
Actually, it's never clear what THE SAINT is supposed to be. For an action film, it certainly treats the ostensibly primary plot and its associated action as an afterthought. It is interesting to see new faces like Serbedzija and Valery Nikolaev (as Tretiak's son) in the villain roles, but the roles themselves aren't interesting at all. The resolution of their plotting comes as an anti-climax, with the bad guys apparently willing to accept their fate with a shrug; in fact, Tretiak seems more interested in The Saint's exploits than in his own plans, making him Kilmer's chief rival as Kilmer's #1 fan.
There are a couple of sharp sequences when THE SAINT actually does provide some action -- Emma's dash for the American embassy and Simon's unnerving underwater stay in an icy river are particularly notable -- but too many other moments fall flat. Some of the action appears to have been salvaged from MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE's cutting room floor, with editing that butchers punch lines, introduces and discards supporting characters, and leaves plenty of threads dangling and questions unanswered. If anyone can explain to me the importance of the microchip The Saint steals from Tretiak, or why Tretiak never makes an effort to retrieve it, I'd sure like to know.
I suppose it might seem hypocritical of me to knock THE SAINT for spending so much time developing the romance between Simon and Emma after I have criticized plenty of other action films for spending no time at all on such matters. The real problem is that the romantic sub-plot is never integrated into the story; it runs parallel and runs longer, including an extended coda involving their reunion which could have (and should have) ended three or four times before it actually does. Shue struggles to make some sense out of a character who has to deliver a lot of exposition and whose weak heart is magically strengthened by love, but it's hard to play a romantic scene with someone who seems to love himself even more than you love him. THE SAINT was unlikely to be a great film even without Kilmer's preening, but it would have been a less grating one. Perhaps the _real_ sequel to MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE should involve someone trying to tame Kilmer's ego.
On the Renshaw scale of 0 to 10 all saints dazes: 4.
Visit Scott Renshaw's MoviePage http://www-leland.stanford.edu/~srenshaw Subscribe to receive reviews directly via email See details on the MoviePage
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews