The Holcroft Covenant (1985)

Fantastic!

A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

The plot isn't so bad, but the pace of storytelling is too slow which makes people bored. Certain moments are so obvious and unnecessary for the main plot. I would've fast-forwarded those moments if it was an online streaming. The ending looks like implying a sequel, not sure if this movie will get one

This one kind of lost me a bit. Still I like the way the ending came out. The giant conspiracy that 4 billion dollars was supposed to fuel does not come off in the end. I will say the conspirators aimed high.40 years ago in the last days of World War II three German generals managed to siphon off a lot of Third Reich loot and stash it in some Swiss banks. With the interest it's now 4 billion dollars. What to do with that kind of bread?That's what Michael Caine is wondering, he is one of the three sons of a German general. He and his mother Lilli Palmer fled Germany just before World War II started and he's been brought up American, though he's the most cockney sounding American I ever heard. When Michel Lonsdale Swiss banker brings him the news, it kind of hits him unexpectedly. What a lottery prize that even if we have to share it.Share it he does with Anthony Andrews, German born and British raised with his sister Victoria Tennant and Mario Adorf who is a famous symphony conductor.Someone's trying to kill Caine, but who and why? That is the complex possibly too complex puzzle of The Holcroft Covenant. The action is fast, but it seems at cross purposes with the story. It's a strain to figure out the who and why with the bullets flying fast and furious. In fact most of the cast dies.Too much needless strain.

This movie intrigued me right from the beginning, with unusual twists and turns with a surprise ending.Very well directed and written, and the music carries it well too.Being a big fan of Michael Cain, he did not disappoint and fit the role perfectly. No one could have done it better.The DVD is in my collection, and I watch it often. It's always enjoyable and despicable as well.It's the personification of evil versus good.I would recommend this movie to anyone except children.Enjoy! I always do..

Michael Caine as a German-American? Gimme a break! This whole project is so desperately flawed that even Lilli Palmer cannot save it, though her performance as Caine's mother is the best in the film. You know something is wrong when you see the opening credits: there are just too many screenwriters, and even Edward Anhalt is in there. How many rewrites can a succession of people do to save a doomed script? Clearly not enough. This is an excellent yarn, taken from a Robert Ludlum book which must have been a gripping story. But what a mess they have made of it. John Frankenheimer was an excellent director who was what one could call 'uneven'. In other words, he did not always deliver an acceptable result, and here he fails. He tries and tries, but it is no use. Anthony Andrews gives a better than expected performance, manages to avoid being arch, and with his blonde appearance convinces us that he is a German with an Iron Cross for a heart. Victoria Tennant, such an under-valued actress, does a fine job. Michael Lonsdale is wholly convincing as a quietly dominant Swiss banker who never needs to raise his voice because money speaks for him. It all could have been so good, but when you decide to cast a London cockney as an American architect whose father was a Nazi general, well please ... Michael Caine has never been anything other than Michael Caine. You could call that being true to himself or you could call it lack of talent. Certainly when he is called upon in this film to cry, you know it is glycerine drops, and the idea of a barrow boy crying, come on. The trouble was that in the 1970s Michael Caine was the only 'bankable' British star, which certainly gave too much power to his agent, Dennis Sellinger. And I guess this carried over into the eighties. But by then he was a shadow of the chirpy cricket of the East End that rode the wave of the revolution in class consciousness right to the top. Talk about perfect timing, Caine became the icon of a social movement. But somebody forgot to tell him how to act. Later in life, Caine finally picked up the skills along the way, and dozens of movies were his RADA, so he ended up a good actor in the end. But this was 1985, when he was still hopeless at being anyone but the same Michael Caine we saw last time, and the time before, and the time before. And that is a bore. Yes, tis a pity.

A sprawling and lengthy Robert Ludlum novel was filtered down into this two-hour adaptation. Caine plays a foreign-born American (something that is repeated throughout in order to explain his accent!) architect who discovers that he has been placed in charge of a couple of billion dollars, set aside by his late Nazi father and two other officers, as a way of making latter day reparations to the Jewish family decimated by the Holocaust. In order to activate the funds, he must track down the sons of the other two men who were part of the covenant and gather them at the Swiss bank where they will sign their names and release the money. Caine has barely been informed of the situation before assassins have begun trying to kill him and when they fail in their attempts, his mother Palmer starts to feel the heat as well. He meets up with various mysterious types such as Munch and Hepton as he tries to unravel what's happening. Caine teams up with Andrews, one of the sons, and Andrews' sister Tennant and they seek out the third child, with danger lurking at practically every turn. Eventually, Caine discovers that, not only can he not be sure of whom to trust, but also that the money may not even have been intended for the purpose specified! Caine is, of course, miscast in a role intended for James Caan, but he makes the best of it. He had played in many espionage and spy films during his career. One of his strongest scenes occurs at the very end as he is reacting to an occurrence. Tennant gives a typically bland and uninvolving performance with only an occasional kink in the storyline to keep her from practically vanishing. Andrews brings a welcome touch of flair to his haughty character. Palmer lends some dignity to her role (her last), though she has to contend with some big hair and some even bigger eyeglasses. Though there is a certain degree of interest in the premise and some of the action sequences are captivating, overall this is a sub-par film. It has a fairly tacky look to it, despite the location shooting and it's overlaid with an overbearing and dated-sounding synthesized score. Attempts to inject sex into the story only come off as desperate (though the one big "shocker" was indeed contained in the novel, albeit in a slightly different context than what's shown here.) Beyond that, the plot, as distilled from the larger novel, makes precious little sense and relies on contrivance and an unbelievable amount of convenient globe-trotting. It's disheartening to hear director Frankenheimer, the man behind "The Birdman of Alcatraz," "The Manchurian Candidate" and "The Train" among others, singing the praises of this below average movie on the DVD commentary, though it's understandable that he, if anyone, should like it. It's not completely uninteresting. It's just not particularly good.