Bullseye! Reviews

The frenetic but flat caper-comedy BULLSEYE! owes its existence, strangely enough, to Gunga Din, Rudyard Kipling's adventure of British soldiers and their dashing deeds during the native uprisings in 19th-century India. Movie mogul Menahem Golan had planned an epic adaptation featuring veteran stars Michael Caine and Roger Moore, in hopes of recapturing the magic that young Cary Grant and Douglas Fairbanks Jr. brought to the classic 1939 version. Not surprisingly, Golan's remake never took flight. Roger Moore himself explained why in typically self-deprecating fashion: "We're older than any dead field marshal, let alone a live one. How can we play corporals in the Indian Army?" So Moore's agent submitted the script for BULLSEYE!, cowritten by veteran showman and songwriter Leslie Bricusse, as a substitute vehicle for Caine and Moore. Government researcher Dr. Daniel Hicklar (Michael Caine) has perfected cold fusion for Britain but is keeping it a secret. He and cohort Sir John Bavistock (Roger Moore) plan to auction the formula off to whatever sleazy foreign power offers the biggest bribe. But two con artists, also played by Caine and Moore, plan to impersonate the scoundrels and steal the payoff themselves. Soon the CIA and the British Secret Service get involved, as faux Caine and Moore try to rendezvous with sinister foreigners while eluding the now-murderous Hicklar and Bavistock, resulting in a flurry of mistaken-identity gags, slapstick, and loads of travelogue footage of England and Scotland. Mayhem-prone director Michael Winner (DEATH WISH) has assembled this farce in skittish fashion, as though hot coals littered the floor of his cutting room. The quality of jokes ranges from mediocre to tasteless, and after a time Winner resorts to a barrage of running gags and recurring characters who pop out of the foliage, state their catchphrases and retreat. Example: a persistent Korean agent trailing the heroes repeatedly grabs bystanders and demands "What did they say?!" And he's one of the funnier ones. Roger Moore is in his element with such lightweight material; the former James Bond plays a suave con-man who's really a craven coward and has betrayed so many partners-in-crime, one character comments, that the Queen's prison has a whole wing dedicated to him. The versatile and prolific Caine makes less of an impression in either of his roles. As ex-convict Sidney Lipton he walks through some standard pratfalls and delivers superfluous voice-over narration, giving a play-by-play of the plotting ("This is a major double cross--now they're deliberately letting Bavistock go!...") As Dr. Hicklar he never masters the villain's American accent, a fact Winner makes into another running gag. Additional inside humor includes a subplot about a girl CIA operative who turns out to be Lipton's daughter. The actress, Deborah Barrymore, is actually the child of Roger Moore. (She reportedly modified her last name because of an overabundance of Moores in the acting union.) The filmmakers also nudge the viewers with cameo appearances by John Cleese, Patsy Kensit, Jenny Seagrove and more, all appearing "by special permission of their mothers," according to the flippant closing credits. The identical-twin mix-ups are handled with quick editing cutaways and the briefest use of stand-ins; no visual effects wizardry here. In fact, although an army of stunt performers receive credit, some of the physical bits are accomplished using painfully phony-looking mannequins. Celebrity lookalikes of Queen Elizabeth and Margaret Thatcher show up as well, the latter badly dating the picture because Thatcher was no longer British prime minister when BULLYSEYE! premiered in London in November 1990. Despite all the star power the film skipped theatrical exhibition in the United States, making its debut on home video the next year. (Violence, substance abuse, profanity, sexual situations.)