The Holcroft Covenant

John Frankenheimer’s adaptation of Robert Ludlum's thriller is a OK-ish Boy’s Own Adventure story, full of stereotypical characters doing stereotypical things. Michael Caine plays Noel Holcroft an American architect, the son of a high-ranking Nazi who committed suicide in 1945 and who left a huge fortune in a Swiss bank of which Holcroft becomes the executor together with his father’s colleague’s two sons apparently to do good in the world. Holcroft’s mother (Lili Palmer) however reckons that this is a set up, and sure enough…

The whole shebang is meant to be a sophisticated international thriller in the Bond style but if the film bumbles along ineffectually enough for the first hour after Holcroft gets involved in a Berlin street sex carnival is spirals downwards into a farrago of bad acting, awful dialogue and lame stunts that pushes it close to so-bad-it’s-good territory. Caine who was an 11th hour replacement for James Caan, clearly barely had time to learn his lines and when he does try to act is ridiculous (his scene with the wheelchair-bound Oberst stands out in this respect) but then so is everyone else, especially Anthony Andrews and Victoria Tennant (her love scene with Holcroft another howler) as the main supports.

The Holcroft Covenant is one of those films that seems to have been made by people who simply had no real interest in what they were doing and delegated most of the task to a team of assistants. Watch it for the laughs but expect no more.

DVD Extras: None

Available from: Shock Entertainment

 

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