Rodrigo Amaro A good film, indeed, but not so much of an exciting experience to watch it and those who know Frederick Forsyth's works as novelist are highly familiar on how gripping and thrilling his characters and situations are. But the thing that disappointed me the most is that Forsyth wrote the film script and what I saw wasn't so interesting to make me feel great about it.Well, the story isn't news, again we have a plot where Soviets want to destroy the Capitalist/American system, this time the target is an American base in England. Now, the British intelligence has to find the terrorist before something bad happens. The villain, however, is one man and one man only, a deadly KGB spy (Pierce Brosnan) who has the mission of exploding an atomic bomb on a American military base. The man on his track is the charming agent John Preston (Michael Caine, very good), who has to fight the bureaucracy of his boss (Julian Glover) to finally solve this situation.The problem I had with the film is the awfully number of characters and tiny little situations where I couldn't understand clearly what was happening, some of the characters motivations as well wasn't good presented. The lack of some great action sequences also bothered me a little, but the ones developed were very interesting (the scene where Michael Caine jumps out of the car, then runs to a moving train; and Barry's crazy chase with the van almost hitting the people). The cat and mouse game of "The Day of the Jackal" is inexistent here except for the final moments (here's a writer making a copy of himself. The whole situation is so similar that is beyond belief). The appeal of "The Fourth Protocol" lies in the incredible cast assembled that not only includes Brosnan and Caine but also Ned Beatty, Ray McAnally, Joanna Cassidy (quite effective as Brosnan partner), Michael Gough and others.It's not a case of great performances but all of them have decent parts to play with. Surprisingly strange is the fact of a great director like John Mackenzie, specialist in creating thrilling moments in films like "Deadly Voyage" and "Infiltrator" (both TV movies) seemed a little lost with this script since it's hard to feel some thrill with everything presented (except when Pierce is killing his victims, he's a real stone cold kind of a guy). If the drama is quite hard to follow, the suspense only works for limited moments. But seeing the general picture as a whole you still can have a decent movie, with some good surprises. To me, one random moment that marked me in this film is when Michael Caine beats two racist punks on the subway, that was really awesome. I don't know why it's really in the film but it's a great moment to be seen. It could've been special but it also could've been way worst, just one step in false and this could be a reunion of wasted talents. Gladly, this didn't happened. Fans of Cold War flicks will enjoy it but be prepared for lots of confusing things. 6/10

Al At this stage of his career Pierce Brosnan was only known to me for his part in Remington Steele which was a fairly light role.In fact James Bond is a fairly harmless character compared to the ruthless agent he plays in this film. The urgency of his acting is the feature of this film.Caine's character is engaging but fails to keep pace with Brosnan's Petrofsky.I watched this on cable television in my hotel and was guessing throughout what year it might be by the devices used and cars driven.Another chilling role was the authoritative Sir Nigel Irvine played by the late Ian Richardson who dresses down the gormless character Anton Rogers plays "a treat." As Richardson rates amongst my top 5 actors it was a very enjoyable part of the film for me.Out of interest John Hurt, Alan Bates, Humphrey Bogart and Edward Woodward would be the other four.

writers_reign This is the kind of film I watch if it comes free with a newspaper I buy anyway and if the choice on television is either Mr. Bean or Carry On Brain-dead. Those factors combined recently so I sat through it and managed not to fall asleep. Caine phones in a Harry Palmer-lite performance as the (surprise, surprise) insubordinate spy-catcher who lucks in to a fiendish Russian plot to detonate a nuclear device on a US Air Base in England thus making America the heavy who has flouted the 'no-WMD in our respective countries' rule. Essentially it's a thriller without any thrills, a jaded cat making half-hearted attempts to catch a badly run-down clockwork mouse. The acting is okay and about a third of the usual suspects are wheeled out to do a day's shoot and get the free lunch. No worse than most of the genre but no better than any.

ghostman1971 This is a very poor film giving the impression of a director who has no idea what he is doing. The film is a mess without any suspense what so ever. All there is is confusion for the viewer, as if the film maker in some way thought that that would make up for the very poor story. Throughout the film you are waiting for something exiting to happen but the climax never goes as the ending is as bad as the rest of this mess. Just skip this one!