The Holcroft Covenant Reviews

Michael Caine, born in Germany but adopted by Americans, learns his real father, who had been one of Hitler's financial wizards, left more than $4 billion upon his death. Ostensibly, Caine is to distribute this money to make amends for the horrors Hitler created, but little does the heir realize that his father's huge fortune was really designated for those wanting to build a new Nazi regime: the Fourth Reich. Thus begins a scenic tour of Europe, with Caine and his lovely lady, Victoria Tennant, moving from New York to Geneva, then to London, and finally to a seedy area of Berlin with the greedy neo-Nazi assassins taking potshots at the couple along the way. Robert Ludlum is one of the best-selling espionage novelists in history, but his works, like those of his colleague in spy mayhem, John Le Carre, have shown an amazing resistance to adaptation for the screen. Here John Frankenheimer leads Michael Caine and a fairly talented cast to the same snag Sam Peckinpah hit in THE OSTERMAN WEEKEND. A plot that barely made sense in a 300-page novel makes even less sense in a 100-page screenplay that leaves out a great deal of expository material. All the audience is left with is a bewildering array of characters, locations, and random killings, all to no apparent point.