lost-in-limbo Just like its leading man Yul Brynner, "The Double Man" is a decently lean, direct and hard-hearted late 60s spy melodrama. A steadfast Brynner simply commands the screen, even when no dialogues are spoken, his psychical presence and glare can knock you down. Here he plays CIA agent Dan Slater who heads to a ski resort in the Tyrolean Alps after the reported accidental death of his son, but he believes it wasn't an accident and unknowingly to him his arrival is actually part of a cunning Cold War ploy. It's a well-handled and good-looking (thanks to the scenic cinematography of picturesque snowy backdrop) presentation, as the plot is thick on intrigue and investigation, as it slowly builds upon its brooding framework. There's nothing particularly exciting about it, as the thrills are few and minor and it's overly talky. However the structure is persistent, as the exchanges have a moody intensity and Brynner carries it along nicely with all that chasing and shadowy scheming going on behind the scenes. The ludicrous twist when it comes isn't much of one, because of the clues that are given. Really it only complicates matters, but this works for its stone cold approach. Franklin J. Schaffner's taut direction is grounded and practical in style, as he lets the story's conflicts evolve and the cast take control. The ever-beautiful Britt Ekland plays an important piece to the plot's stirrings and there's excellent support from the likes of Clive Revill, Anton Differing, Lloyd Nolan and Moira Lister. Also dominating was the instrumental music score. Sometimes it worked, other times it was on overload.

blanche-2 Yul Brynner is "The Double Man" in this 1967 spy film also starring Britt Ekland, Clive Revill, Moira Lister, and Lloyd Nolan.Brynner is Dan Slater, a CIA agent who travels to Austria after the death of his teenage son in a skiing accident. It's been written off as an accident, but Slater isn't convinced. He asks a former undercover agent (Clive Revill) for help, but ends up doing most of the investigating himself and soon realizes that this was no accident. But to what end? Slater stays in Austria hoping to figure out what the plan is, and who has initiated it and why. He eventually meets Gina (Ekland) after several attempts at meeting her on the slopes. Gina had seen his son on the lift.The plot is soon revealed, leading to a dangerous confrontation.Pretty good, with an excellent performance by Brynner as a cold, hard man who shows no emotion and perhaps feels none. Also, the scenery is gorgeous, as is Britt Ekland, at the height of her beauty here.Someone here mentioned that the glossy spoofs are better remembered today, and perhaps that poster is correct. However, I don't think there's too much remarkable here. It's a serviceable film with a very intrusive music score.See it for Brynner's performance.

robert-temple-1 Yul Brynner was an impressive and powerful screen presence, moving like a panther, scowling like one as well from under his intent brow. He really laid it on, and it generally works. But here is the problem: this film is about 'duplicating' him. The Soviets, aided by the East Germans (Anton Diffring not as a Nazi officer this time but as a Stasi officer, same thing), intend to replace Dan Slater, Assistant Deputy Director of the CIA (played by Brynner), with a double. The double (played by Brynner, naturally) has the same accent and the same walk, is the same size, and has had plastic surgery to have the same face. But of all the people in Hollywood who could not be duplicated, Yul Brynner must be the top. So how silly can you get? This kind of story might work with one of those identikit actors, who are especially popular in Hollywood at the moment actually, but somebody as weird as Yul Brynner?! And the story gets sillier. Because there is cute 34 year-old Britt Ekland. I had forgotten what a looker she really was in those days. Naturally there has to be 'the girl' in every such story, so credulity is stretched even further to fit her in, despite the fact that she is not really part of the story and has to be squeezed between the floorboards (that's because the story is set in the Austrian Tyrol, where all the chalets are wooden), so that Anton Diffring and his team can blend in with the locals and also so that some people can combine the film production with a skiing holiday (a joke? or real?). Shades of Leni Riefenstahl and the mountain films of the twenties and thirties such as STORM OVER MONT BLANC! This film is made all the more objectionable because of the terrible music score by Ernie Freeman. In the late sixties it was considered trendy to fill every moment of a thriller when people weren't speaking with blaring trumpets and trombones in a kind of hep ersatz jazz, the theory being that this would heighten the tension while people were walking up staircases (supposed to be ominous, with goodness knows what fate awaiting them at the top) or approaching looming buildings which might contain goodness knows what villains. More likely it made people hold their ears or run screaming from the cinema in search of a doctor. The film was directed by Franklin Schaffner (best known for PLANET OF THE APES the following year, 1968, and his next film, PATTON, two years later in 1971; his film SPHINX of 1981 was no great shakes, see my review), who should have known better, and who at least saved it from being terrible, so that it remained merely bad. Moira Lister has great fun being a spoilt rich hostess who throws parties and tries to seduce toy boys. Clive Revill is good at being a hangdog former British spy who can't take it any more, and cannot even make himself pick up a gun, although finally he regains his courage of course and does pick up one lest he let down a friend. Lloyd Nolan plays the head of the CIA from a wheelchair and whines: 'How could Dan go off somewhere without telling me where?' Some CIA! A cable arrives addressed to Dan Slater, Central Intelligence Agency, Washington, DC, we see it on screen but no one at the CIA bothers to read it and it is handed to Brynner as if it were a Christmas card. Sure, that's how it works in Washington. But this is a serious matter: will the dastardly communist Yul Brynner return to America and betray all the secrets of the USA to the sour-faced Russian who has instructed the eager Diffring? Or will the patriotic Yul Brynner save the day by stopping him? As the bad Brynner says to the good Brynner during a gunfight: 'There cannot be two of us.' Is a glass half full or half empty? Is a movie half good or half bad? Five stars will leave you wondering about that.

Smalling-2 A ruthless CIA agent arrives at an Alps ski paradise to track down his son's deadly accident he thinks is really murder, and finds himself in a complex web of intrigue.Well-staged, quite surprising minor Cold War espionage with magnificent snow-bound photography and exciting action sequences, hampered by bursts of gratuitous violence and an unpleasant hero.