There can't have been many more actresses than Sean Young who could so successfully blend beauty with sensuality. Unfortunately credible acting would have to be shoehorned into that description. She sounds like she's reading from cue cards in that breathless voice. On the other hand, maybe that's how she speaks offstage. Her offstage antics couldn't have helped her career. Michael Caine, on the other hand, is a believable person here, with his Cockney accent and rhyming slang. He has a deft posh accent too, as in "Zulu." He gives a leaden interview in "Breaking the Mold."
Caine and Young are the principals of this somewhat confused thriller about shipping illegal arms to madmen in the desert. The film was shot only a year or two following the collapse of the USSR and it's sort of elegiac. The heavy, Ian Holm, gives good support as the secret agent (or something) who suffered traumatic role loss when the primary enemy disappeared in a puff of smoke like the devil in the third act of "Faust" and who has become corrupt and cynical. Bob Hoskins is in it too, as a good guy, but isn't around very long.
I kind of liked the musical score. Caine loves jazz and owns a club that -- well, if you like bebop, you'll like the source music. He doesn't mind classical music either, "except Schönberg," which is okay with me.
The film is a thriller about intrigues in high and low places, illicit love affairs, good guys and bad guys. There are some tense moments, notably next to electric train tracks at night, and again in a shipyard at Port of London, which has Caine running around in a maze of those huge pre-package containers designed to be lifted from the ship's cargo and fitted directly onto the backs of semis.
All very efficient, but they took the romance out of being stevedore managing breakhold cargo. As a kid I thrilled while wandering around the docks in New York and pocketing rolls of cork from Portugal and cylinders of cinnamon from God knows what exotic port. Here, poor Caine must run frantically, he must run across the tops of the malignant containers, to escape the security unit that's in hot pursuit.
It's rather enjoyable, especially if you don't place too many urgent demands on the logic of the plot.
Caine and Young are the principals of this somewhat confused thriller about shipping illegal arms to madmen in the desert. The film was shot only a year or two following the collapse of the USSR and it's sort of elegiac. The heavy, Ian Holm, gives good support as the secret agent (or something) who suffered traumatic role loss when the primary enemy disappeared in a puff of smoke like the devil in the third act of "Faust" and who has become corrupt and cynical. Bob Hoskins is in it too, as a good guy, but isn't around very long.
I kind of liked the musical score. Caine loves jazz and owns a club that -- well, if you like bebop, you'll like the source music. He doesn't mind classical music either, "except Schönberg," which is okay with me.
The film is a thriller about intrigues in high and low places, illicit love affairs, good guys and bad guys. There are some tense moments, notably next to electric train tracks at night, and again in a shipyard at Port of London, which has Caine running around in a maze of those huge pre-package containers designed to be lifted from the ship's cargo and fitted directly onto the backs of semis.
All very efficient, but they took the romance out of being stevedore managing breakhold cargo. As a kid I thrilled while wandering around the docks in New York and pocketing rolls of cork from Portugal and cylinders of cinnamon from God knows what exotic port. Here, poor Caine must run frantically, he must run across the tops of the malignant containers, to escape the security unit that's in hot pursuit.
It's rather enjoyable, especially if you don't place too many urgent demands on the logic of the plot.