Black Bag (2025)

George Woodhouse (Michael Fassbender) went to a club to meet Philip Meacham.  Meacham explained that the agency had a traitor.  He provided a list with 5 names.  One of the names on the list was Kathryn St. Jean (Cate Blanchett), who happened to be George's wife.  In order to ferret out the rat, George invited all of them to dinner at his home.  George is a gourmet; he also drugged the food.  Once everyone was sufficiently lubricated, the game began.  Make a resolution for the person on your right.  It turned out that everyone was sleeping with everyone else, but nothing to mark out a traitor.  However, after dinner, George spotted something amiss that implicated his wife.

In the week that followed, George investigated the suspects, including his wife.  His investigations led to further incriminating evidence against his wife!  Even if she was guilty, he would protect her.  He needed to thwart a clandestine plan while keeping his wife safe.  The crisscross of lies led everyone to suspect one another.

The climax was something of a letdown.  It is a replay of the original dinner party with life on the line.  That the villain grabbed the gun provided by the host as though it was actually useful was beyond foolish.  Of course, it's a dummy gun.  How in the world could anyone - especially someone who works in intelligence - believe a loaded gun would just be offered?

Fassbender plays George as a flat, emotionless man.  He makes Roger Moore's raised eyebrow look like Shatnerian overacting by comparison.  He is a cold calculating machine with a keen eye for deception.  Cate Blanchett is similarly limited in emotional range.  It definitely gives the impression that these spies are focused and unflappable.  By contrast, the satellite operator, Clarissa, has wide emotional swings and the psychologist, Zoe, felt very normal as a person.  Pierce Brosnan plays Arthur Stieglitz, the chief of the agency.  It is not a good role, as he gets outmaneuvered by his subordinates and seemed to be oblivious to what was happening.

The movie feels like an old British spy thriller in the vein of The Ipcress File or Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.  There is a lot of dialogue and no action.  This is more of a whodunit than a spy movie.  That the villain proved to be sloppy and incompetent was disappointing.

Just okay.

The Long Good Friday (1980)

Colin (Paul Freeman) delivered a suitcase of money, but not before pocketing some of it.  Soon after, his driver and date are killed and left on the side of the road.  Harold Shand (Bob Hoskins) returned to London from the United States.  Harold is a gangster with a beautiful girlfriend (Helen Mirren), an extensive network of goons & thugs, a police chief on the dole, and even a councilman in his pocket.  His trip to America was to arrange a joint venture with the mafia.  Everything was going his way.  Then his Roll Royce exploded, killing the driver.  Colin turned up stabbed to death at a swimming pool.  Who was making a move against him?  His deal with the mafia was being threatened.  Strong measures were needed.  However, every effort came to naught.  No one knew from where the threat originated.  When the full story is finally revealed, many of the mysterious events become clear.  Even so, Harold thinks he can handle this threat the way he has handled other gangsters.  He cannot.  Of course, virtually everyone in the film is a criminal, a corrupt official, or a hapless victim.  Many of them get their just deserts.

Bob Hoskins is terrific as the gangster, a great performance.  Sure, he's clearly a bad guy but you can't help but root for him to come through this trial.  The rest of the cast is quite good, but this is Hoskin's movie and he carries it perfectly.  Paul Freeman had surprisingly high billing for someone with almost no lines who dies early in the film.  He followed this movie by playing the chief villain, Belloq, in Raiders of the Lost Ark.  Pierce Brosnan makes his movie debut as an IRA assassin, his only line being 'Hi' before stabbing Colin to death.  His IRA partner, Daragh O'Malley, would go on to play Sgt. Harper in the Sharpe series.

Terrific film that grows to a crescendo of an ending.  Highly recommended.

Noble House (1988)

Alastair Struan (Denholm Elliott) has called a midnight meeting at the HQ of the Struan & Company, the leading trading company in Hong Kong.  There are only 4 attendees: his nephew, Ian Dunross (Pierce Brosnan), Philip Chen (Burt Kwouk), and Chen's son, John.  The company is in crisis and Alastair has opted to transfer leadership to Ian.  The name for the CEO is Tai Pan.  Dunross's first act is to fire Alastair from the traditional position of a former Tai Pan.  Minutes later, the folly of his predecessor's leadership is exposed and Ian must make the company public to keep it afloat.

Three years later, Struan & Co are once again treading water.  Dunross has looked overseas for a foreign investor and found Par Con Industries, which is run by Lincoln "Linc" Bartlett (Ben Masters).  Bartlett is a corporate raider who intends to take over Struan & Co, then sell it for a huge profit.  He has secretly hired John Chen as an inside source which gives him an unusually strong bargaining position.  Moreover, after a meet & greet with Dunross, Linc confers with Struan's chief rival, Rothwell-Gornt.  Rothwell-Gornt is run by Quillan Gornt (John Rhys-Davies), who proves to have a Hatfield vs. McCoy relationship with Ian Dunross and his ancestors.  Of note, this is a sequel to Tai Pan, which took place 150 years earlier and is frequently referenced in dialogue regarding the family history.  Maybe I should have watched that movie first.

Though the ostensible plot follows the wheeling and dealing of these titans of industry, the story is really about the love lives of Ian Dunross and Linc Bartlett.  Dunross and Par Con VP Casey Tcholok (Deborah Raffin) are instantly attracted to each other and it quickly escalates, but not without the usual soap operatic bumps of being business rivals.  Then there is Linc and Quillan Gornt's former mistress, Orlanda Ramos (Julia Nickson).  Though Linc knows that Quillan has arranged the tryst, he nonetheless falls for Orlanda.  Of course, she falls for him too.

The story takes place over a week or so, but it is an eventful week.  There is a building fire that nearly kills our heroes, a kidnapping, building collapse, an attempted rape, an international incident, drug dealing blackmailers, and more.  Who knew that Hong Kong was so exciting?

This four-part miniseries has a great setting but is mediocre in execution.  Brosnan is a grim character.  Fresh from his affable and charming role as Remington Steele, here he is a humorless tactician, a man who has allowed his problems to grind him down but never defeat him.  He has no friends, only potential allies for his latest gambit to keep Struan & Co. in business.  Like in the Fourth Protocol, his charm and personality has been stripped away to leave a mostly unappealing character.  By contrast, John Rhys-Davies is having a blast as the villain.  He's nasty but fun, often laughing and smiling as he twists the knife.  Ben Masters is on the one-hand a conniving businessman who fits in the corporate raider mold of Gordon Gecko, but then has this sappy romance with Orlanda.  It is a difficult fit.

Overall, it is mediocre.  Pierce Brosnan and Julia Nickson would star together the following year in another miniseries: Around the World in 80 Days.  That's a better miniseries.  Watch that one instead.

Everything or Nothing (2003)

James Bond (Pierce Brosnan) is in Tajikistan to recover a Soviet suitcase bomb before it can be sold.  He tricks the buyer and seller into believing a double-cross is in progress and then uses the confusion to snatch the suitcase and retreat to his extraction point.  Cue the opening credits and theme song!

Returning to England, Bond reports to M (Judi Dench).  She immediately dispatches him to rescue Dr. Katya Nadanova (Heidi Klum), a scientist who specializes in nanotechnology.  With new gadgets and vehicles provided by Q (John Cleese), he sets out for Egypt.  Bond infiltrates and destroys a nanotechnology lab, pursues an armored train, battles his old adversary Jaws (Richard Kiel), and escapes with Dr. Nadanova.  Bond has hardly returned to England than M sends him to find Agent 003, who has gone missing in Peru.  Here, Bond tangles with the main villain, Diavolo (Willem Dafoe), a former KGB agent.  He also meets the main Bond Girl, Serena St. Germaine (Shannon Elizabeth), a geologist.  New Orleans and Moscow are other settings for the action.

A walkthrough of the entire game is available to watch on YouTube.  Though the game makes use of the actors for all the dialogue, that mostly proves to be just a line here or there.  This is not a talky game and the demands on the actors are minimal.  Oddly, both M and Q get a lot of dialogue as they direct Bond during each mission, as he has a constant uplink with them.  There is a lot of action.  The gunfights are extensive as Bond clears levels.  The car chases are long and plentiful.  The body count is astronomical.  Bond has the opportunity to drive/operate a variety of vehicles.  There's a motorcycle, an SUV, a racecar, a sports car (same one from Die Another Day), a helicopter, and a couple of tanks.

One really creepy thing was that the villain's plan for New Orleans was to destroy the levies and flood the city.  Why is that creepy?  Because 2 years after this game was released, the levies broke and the city was flooded.

The walkthrough is 3 hours and the player has not clipped out the bits where he saved the game.  Also, he's not particularly good at the game.  Sure, he got to the end, but he seldom uses his gadgets - in fact, some he never used - and mostly played as a standard 3rd person shooter.  Also, he missed most of the 'Bond Moments' where the game would show a cutscene of awesome action.  Nonetheless, it was a fun story that serves as Brosnan's 5th and final outing as Bond.  Only worth watching if you are also a fan of 3rd person shooter games.

Remington Steele

Laura Holt (Stephanie Zimbalist) had a love for excitement that led her to become a private investigator.  However, few clients were interested in hiring a woman for such work.  To get the clients in the door, she invented a boss, Remington Steele.  With this one change, customers lined up around the block and she, as Mr. Steele's assistant, could handle the case while he was away on some other business.  The scheme worked so well that she brought in another investigator, Murphy (James Read), hired a secretary, Bernice Foxe (Janet DeMay), and leased an office in skyscraper.  The scheme goes awry during a case to protect a valuable gem collection.  A conman and thief (Pierce Brosnan) is scouting the jewels and determines that Remington Steele doesn't exist.  He steps into the role.  Laura can't very well expose him without producing the 'real' Steele.  Besides, he's rather charming.

The interaction among the office staff is a large part of the show.  Remington and Laura are obviously attracted to one another, but she fears the consequences of succumbing to the mutual feeling.  How could she run the agency after that?  To complicate matters, Murphy is also attracted to Laura though she views him merely as a colleague.

The faux Mr. Steele is a great fan of movies and in virtually every episode he associates the current case with a movie, always offering the title, the year it was released, the studio, and often the stars. Quite often, he picks an alias that is a character from a classic movie. Occasionally, his old life intrudes with guest appearances by an old lover (Cassandra Harris - Brosnan's wife) or an old mentor (Efram Zimbalist Jr. - Stephanie's father).

Some of the guest stars of the first season went on to great success: Sharon Stone had a small role as a sister bent on revenge, Paul Reiser was a patient in a sleep clinic with narcolepsy, and Annie Potts was a hippie recalling her days of college protests a decade before.

Despite having aired 40 years ago, the show is still entertaining and relatable.  Good popcorn fun.  Recommended.

Around the World in 80 Days (1989)

Phileas Fogg (Pierce Brosnan) is an English gentleman who lives his life by a strict schedule.  He arrives daily at the Reform Club at noon and the wait staff are never in doubt of what he will order on any given day.  He plays whist with fellow club members (Christopher Lee, Patrick Macnee, Simon Ward), generally discouraging idle chitchat.  However, the topic of traveling around the world is mentioned and he matter-of-factly states that it would take 80 days to circumnavigate the globe.  His fellow club members are aghast and dare him to prove it.  He readily agrees, staking 30,000 pounds as a wager.  That evening, he and his new manservant, Jean Passepartout (Eric Idle) set out to circle the globe.  As coincidence would have it, the Bank of England was robbed and Fogg's sudden departure is viewed as a sign of his guilt.  The bank president (Robert Morley) hires Detective Wilbur Fix (Peter Ustinov) to capture the fugitive!  Though Fix manages to travel with Fogg from Italy, he is never able to secure an arrest warrant before Fogg moves on to another jurisdiction.

As this was a TV miniseries, it has plenty of time to delve into each facet of the journey.  Their travels take them through Paris, Rome, Bombay, the hinterlands of India - where they rescue Princess Aouda (Julia Nickson) - to Burma, through China, to Japan, San Francisco, the American West, New York City, and finally across the Atlantic.  Along the way, they meet a variety of guest stars: Jack Klugman, Pernell Roberts, Darren McGavin, Lee Remick, Robert Wagner, Jill St. John, John Hillerman, and others.  The long runtime also provides the opportunity for Fogg to transform.  His fastidiousness is chipped away thanks to the needs of travel.  Also, he finds himself increasingly attracted to Princess Aouda though likewise feeling that such is inappropriate.  Should life be nothing more than a well-organized schedule for attending the Reform Club and playing whist?  Has he wasted his life so far?

Ustinov is, as always, quite entertaining.  His Detective Fix is both endlessly determined and also somewhat oafish.  He owes his life to Fogg but also views it as his duty to apprehend the man.  There is an entertaining exchange that goes entirely over Fogg's head as Fix explains that he should not take it personally.

This is an excellent adaptation of the story.  Definitely recommended.  Great popcorn fun.

The Mirror Crack'd (1980)

It is 1953 and American film star Marina Rudd (Elizabeth Taylor) has come to England to star as Mary, Queen of Scots, in her comeback movie.  During a reception at the manor where she and her husband, Jason Rudd (Rock Hudson) are staying, a village local, Heather Babcock, dies from poison.  As chance would have it, Cherry was working as a server that day; Cherry is the housekeeper for Miss Jane Marple (Angela Lansbury).  Miss Marple quizzes Cherry in detail about the events prior to Heather's death and concludes that Marina was the intended target.  As luck would have it, Inspector Craddock (Edward Fox) of Scotland Yard is dispatched to investigate; he happens to be Miss Marple's favorite nephew and also something of a film buff.  He interviews all the principals and then discusses it with his aunt, serving as an Archie Goodwin to Miss Marple's Nero Wolfe.  Among the suspects are Rudd's personal secretary Ella Ziellinsky (Geraldine Chaplin), movie producer Martin N. Fenn (Tony Curtis), and Marina's arch rival, actress Lola Brewster (Kim Novak).

The most interesting aspect of the movie is trivial.  Pierce Brosnan had a non-speaking role where he played Jamie, husband to Mary Queen of Scots.  The director, Guy Hamilton, rose to fame as director of Goldfinger (1964).  As such, Hamilton directed 3 Bond actors: Connery (Goldfinger & Diamonds are Forever), Moore (Live and Let Die, The Man with the Golden Gun), and Brosnan.

By the movie's conclusion, the solution is irrelevant.  Marple's deductions explain the plot but at no point change the events.  That she was always one link away from the action made the movie slow and a little boring.  Strangely enough, where Marina Rudd was trying to stage a comeback from a several year hiatus from movies, Elizabeth Taylor hadn't had a leading role in several years prior to this movie; good casting.

Only for the diehard Agatha Christie fan.

The Fourth Protocol (1987)

Kim Philby, infamous British intelligence officer who defected to the Soviet Union, arrives at a remote dacha for a meeting with the head of the KGB.  No sooner has he stepped out of his car than he is murdered by a Soviet soldier.  It should be noted that Kim Philby (1912-1988) was a real person who was still alive in Russia when this film was released.

Valeri Petrofsky (Pierce Brosnan) arrives at a Soviet base where he is met by the very soldier who shot Philby.  The soldier introduces him to the head of KGB, who has a special mission for him.  He is going to assemble an atomic bomb that the KGB intends to smuggle - piece by piece - into England.  He will then detonate it next to a US Airforce Base.  This was the plot of Octopussy (1983)!

Meanwhile, John Preston (Michael Caine) is busy ferreting out a traitor in London.  He exposes the man but does so by ignoring the orders of his director (Julian Glover).  This earns him a demotion to Ports & Airports duty.  As luck would have it, a Russian sailor was hit by a truck while running from a security guard.  He had an unusual metal disk that is an integral part for an atomic bomb.  It is now a race to see if Preston can track down Petrofsky before he finishes the bomb.

Michael Caine is terrific.  He can be charming, funny, or intimidating.  His character is well-developed without beating the viewer over the head.  A single glance at a picture of him, a woman, and his son explains that his wife is dead and he is a single father.  Despite a demanding job, we see he makes time for his young son.  Really, a well-written and acted role.

By contrast, Brosnan is bland.  In every situation, he has the look of a guilty character.  He spends his time glowering at everyone.  Even when he goes drinking with an American (Matt Frewer AKA Max Headroom), he is stone-faced.  Brosnan is an actor who is overflowing with charisma - Remington Steele had 5 season thanks to it - but here he is one-dimensional.  What kind of spy just looks suspicious all the time?

Ned Beatty had a cameo as a Russian general.  That was unexpected.  There was no effort to do a Russian accent which made it odder still.  Yeah, not buying him as a Russian general.

Ian Richardson was a stand out as Sir Nigel Irvine, a high-ranking secret service official who plays realpolitik with cool demeanor.  His cold-blooded rebuke of a man who unwittingly betrayed the nation was great stuff.

Though it has a strong plot and good characters, it lacks action.  There aren't a lot of thrills in this thriller.  Still, enjoyable to watch and a must see for fans of Michael Caine.