*** This review may contain spoilers ***
*Plot and ending analyzed*
If it wasn't for the insipidly idiotic scenes, namely the ending, this would have been a little better. As it stands, the assassination plot should have been carried out with relative ease. Add a violent New Scotland Yard detective, who I may add is entirely dull, and he puts an end to Rod Steiger's complot and it further sinks into incredulity. Rod Steiger wouldn't be my first choice to play some competent detonation man on the lam. He makes plenty of mistakes to have both the IRA and New Scotland Yard detectives find him.
The Day of the Jackal (1973) also had a similar plot and at least that was better presented throughout the film.
Rod Steiger plays some Irish bloke who served in the North African Campaign of the Second World War, but comes back home a few years later to a divided Ireland. The IRA wants him for a job but he refuses, out of principle he says, but then his wife and kid get gunned down by a young trigger-squeezing Royal Military Police lad who took a rock hit to the mug and "accidentally" fired, and then Rod Steiger plans a hit on Queen Elizabeth II. How is that for his "principles"? Yeah, I know. The IRA look for him, since if he ices Queen Elizabeth, England will destroy the IRA.
It all seems a bit on the weak side. That's because it is.
*Plot and ending analyzed*
If it wasn't for the insipidly idiotic scenes, namely the ending, this would have been a little better. As it stands, the assassination plot should have been carried out with relative ease. Add a violent New Scotland Yard detective, who I may add is entirely dull, and he puts an end to Rod Steiger's complot and it further sinks into incredulity. Rod Steiger wouldn't be my first choice to play some competent detonation man on the lam. He makes plenty of mistakes to have both the IRA and New Scotland Yard detectives find him.
The Day of the Jackal (1973) also had a similar plot and at least that was better presented throughout the film.
Rod Steiger plays some Irish bloke who served in the North African Campaign of the Second World War, but comes back home a few years later to a divided Ireland. The IRA wants him for a job but he refuses, out of principle he says, but then his wife and kid get gunned down by a young trigger-squeezing Royal Military Police lad who took a rock hit to the mug and "accidentally" fired, and then Rod Steiger plans a hit on Queen Elizabeth II. How is that for his "principles"? Yeah, I know. The IRA look for him, since if he ices Queen Elizabeth, England will destroy the IRA.
It all seems a bit on the weak side. That's because it is.