Operation Poker (1965)

Don't listen to the Hype. It's awful

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.

Agent Glenn Foster (Agent OS-14), is offered the use of the BYE-BYE SPECIAL. The Bye-Bye Special is a trick car that has a hidden charge in it, when activated by the driver, will blow away the back half of the car. When Glenn Foster is driving it, a Russian agent puts a gun to the back of his head. Glenn hits the switch and the Russian agent, along with the entire back half of the car, is blown backwards and down a cliff. The car was originally a Black 1955 Chevy. Larry Anderson, Canada.

Secret agent Glenn Forest is assigned to protect a Vietnamese official who's traveling to Geneva for talks with the U.N. His mission becomes more complicated when other agents who escorted the official for part of his journey start getting eliminated one by one. At least that's half of the plot; the other half has to do with a suspiciously lucky poker player who, under a different name, had been working as an assistant to a German scientist who had developed a secret invention; now the scientist is dead, and all the agencies are interested in his device. These two parts of the plot are not very convincingly connected; the pacing is dull at times; the female characters are underdeveloped; and the climactic shootout is underwhelming. On the positive side, there are two great, exhausting fight scenes, some neat tricks (a car that can lose it rear half - and any annoying passengers in it - with the push of a button, a dog that can track a person miles away from the smell of her clothing, murder via electrified gas pedal, not to mention the invention that enables you to see through walls and metal), lots of globe-trotting, and a fun music score. ** out of 4.

Yet another of Roger Browne's half-dozen spy flicks and the first of two for director Civirani, who followed this up with a better one, The Beckett Affair. This is a rather middle-of-the-road film but it is unusual in that we get two adventures for the price of one. Both adventures center around a professor's new invention, of course.The invention everyone is after is definitely of the science fiction type. It's a special tie-clip that when used with a pair of infra-red contact lenses enables the user to see through walls! The guy that stole them from the professor is putting it to good use by wearing it while playing poker and cleaning up! He should think bigger. The first thing Roger does when he discovers this little novelty is use it to spy on his girlfriend getting dressed! That's more like it.This film really gets around. We travel from the Riviera to Geneva to Paris to Casablanca (the Casbah no less), and to Copenhagen. We even get a tour of the Tuborg brewery. There's a prolonged gun battle amongst the giant beer tanks. Talk about product placement!For all its advantages, this isn't really a very good film. As I mentioned, it is middle of the pack stuff. You could do worse but you could definitely do better.