The Jigsaw Man

War is…bad

War is…bad

If you cast your mind (via memory or astral projection or whatever) back to the dawn breaking on the halcyon days of the early 1980s, I guess I can see how 'The Jigsaw Man' might have seemed like a good idea -- you know, the Cold War was still going strong, people like spy movies, Michael Caine was, sort of, a popular actor, Laurence Olivier was, well, available, as was director Terrance Young who could float some love his wife's way by licensing her 1977 novel; it must have seemed like essentially printing money, no?

Yeah, no. This is a mess of a movie. What we get is a highly confused story with Caine playing an secret service big wig who defected to Russia, only to be sent back, with plastic surgery, to retrieve a file, but who instead decides to just play off the Russkies and the Brits to rip everyone off at once so he gets paid coming and going, while trying to reconnect with his adult daughter (Susan George, who is the only actor here that manages to escape with most of dignity intact).

Despite Caine taking wild swings a different accents (including both Russian and American, in addition to a few random dialects), performing a truly mind scrambling 'training montage' sequence (including hanging leg lifts, karate, & kick boxing), and doing that loud/soft/loud thing of his, he's nowhere (and I mean nowhere) near as hammy as Olivier, who I'd say was phoning it in for how engaged he seems, but instead seems to be behaving like a deranged toddler with a stick-on beard. But it's Charles Gray's unhinged delivery comparing his own bald head to a 'big, aggressive prick' before going into a theory of wig wearing that I guess must make a kind of twisted sense if you are also the sort of person who also refers to his own dick as 'Mr Mouse.'

Dreadful. One half star for the training montage which is legit hilarious (even if it wasn't intended as such) and one half for Susan George, 'cause at least she's trying in her scenes.

If you cast your mind (via memory or astral projection or whatever) back to the dawn breaking on the halcyon days of the early 1980s, I guess I can see how 'The Jigsaw Man' might have seemed like a good idea -- you know, the Cold War was still going strong, people like spy movies, Michael Caine was, sort of, a popular actor, Laurence Olivier was, well, available, as was director Terrance Young who could float some love his wife's way by licensing her 1977 novel; it must have seemed like essentially printing money, no?

Yeah, no. This is a mess of a movie. What we get is a highly confused story with Caine playing an secret service big wig who defected to Russia, only to be sent back, with plastic surgery, to retrieve a file, but who instead decides to just play off the Russkies and the Brits to rip everyone off at once so he gets paid coming and going, while trying to reconnect with his adult daughter (Susan George, who is the only actor here that manages to escape with most of dignity intact).

Despite Caine taking wild swings a different accents (including both Russian and American, in addition to a few random dialects), performing a truly mind scrambling 'training montage' sequence (including hanging leg lifts, karate, & kick boxing), and doing that loud/soft/loud thing of his, he's nowhere (and I mean nowhere) near as hammy as Olivier, who I'd say was phoning it in for how engaged he seems, but instead seems to be behaving like a deranged toddler with a stick-on beard. But it's Charles Gray's unhinged delivery comparing his own bald head to a 'big, aggressive prick' before going into a theory of wig wearing that I guess must make a kind of twisted sense if you are also the sort of person who also refers to his own dick as 'Mr Mouse.'

Dreadful. One half star for the training montage which is legit hilarious (even if it wasn't intended as such) and one half for Susan George, 'cause at least she's trying in her scenes.

This shouldn’t have been cut down to 90 minutes and yet any longer and this movie would’ve been intolerable.

This shouldn’t have been cut down to 90 minutes and yet any longer and this movie would’ve been intolerable.