The Holcroft Covenant

"You mustn't speak to strangers, it could be harmful to their health"

Michael Caine has a long and distinguished tradition of taking on film roles purely in exchange for money, resulting in some rather average films elevated solely by his presence. The Holcroft Covenant is your typically sensationalist Third Reich-from-beyond-the-grave political thriller, rendered extra boring by its B-grade look and some very unenthusiastic direction from thriller-veteran John Frankenheimer (who really should have known better). In fact, everyone involved should have known better - the film isn't ridiculously bad, it's just very mediocre due to everyone in it not giving a shit.

Caine plays Noel Holcroft, the secret son of a Nazi officer. In fact, it's so secret that Holcroft himself doesn't even know that his dad was a Nazi. Anyway, it turns out that said Nazi teamed up some of his pals at the end of WWII and hid $4.5 billion in stolen cash, to which Holcroft and some other descendents are the heirs. These descendents must all team up in order to legally gain access to the money, with Holcroft being told by a mysterious messenger named Manfredi (Michael Lonsdale) that this money has been squirrelled away for them so that the long-dead Nazi officers can make amends for their war crimes. Of course, it turns out that some evil dudes want this money for themselves and (unsurprisingly) there's a plot to resurrect the Third Reich.

If you're going to sit through this movie then here are some things for you to expect...

• Bad 80s thriller music achieved via cheap and outdated synth-strings.
• Illogical casting... Caine is meant to be about 20-30 years younger than Michael Lonsdale, yet in reality Lonsdale is only about three years older than Caine.
• Lots of dutch angles to let you know that you are watching a thriller. In fact, there is one of these nearly every three or four minutes.
• An inane and simple-minded script. Holcroft is meant to be a regular guy and yet when he's offered $4.5 billion to fix the world's problems he doesn't entertain any thoughts of doing anything else with the money. Also, the script repeatedly gets hung up on irrelevant details in an attempt to be realistic rather than memorable, so we get gormless dialogue about men being known to carry umbrellas and a lot of boring patter between characters that goes nowhere.
• A very poor sense of dramatic timing. Witness the big dramatic moment when Holcroft must come to terms with killing someone, accompanied by the atrocious score.

The basic thrust behind the story seems to be that Holcroft is this everyman character (an architect) suddenly thrust into a world of espionage that he's not equipped for. I had to laugh at him not being able to drive, he comes across as less of a 'regular' guy and more of an indignant imbecile. He's meant to be American but Caine doesn't even attempt an accent (I guess the paycheck wasn't high enough, or he just didn't take it seriously). A lot of the script points towards him being a wisecracking American under pressure, but the way that he's prone to frequent bursts of disbelief wears thin pretty quickly. I mean, he seems to outright disbelieve that people want to kill him, even though someone tries to kill him right at the beginning of the film.


I suspect that some parts of the film were meant to be funny, like the oldboy MI6 character, but none of it really lands in an amusing fashion on the screen. One of the characters actually warns Holcroft, "Please do not attempt to do anything too vividly cinematic", and I'm thinking someone must have said this to John Frankenheimer too. The love interest starts describing Holcroft at one point as "So kind, so brave, so creative" but there's absolutely zero evidence of this on the screen. The Holcroft Covenant is a flat and dull turkey.

DIRECTOR: John Frankenheimer
WRITER/SOURCE: Screenplay by George Axelrod, John Hopkins and Edward Anhalt. Based on a novel by Robert Ludlum.
KEY ACTORS: Michael Caine, Anthony Andrews, Victoria Tennant, Michael Lonsdale, Lilli Palmer, Mario Adorf.

RELATED TEXTS:
- The Holcroft Covenant, a 1979 thriller-novel by Robert Ludlum.
- See also any number of espionage-thrillers featuring a modern Nazi menace, usually based on pulp spy novels. Includes: The Odessa File, The Boys From Brazil, Marathon Man and The Formula.
- John Frankenheimer first made his name with the cold war thriller The Manchurian Candidate. He also dipped into the thriller genre with the films Seven Days in May, French Connection II, Black Sunday, The Fourth War and Ronin.