Britt Ekland

  • The Double Man (1967)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, November 2022) The Cold War years were rife with thrillers in which vigilant Anglosphere spies had to defeat the perfidious Soviets, and many of those films have sunk into near-obscurity by now. This only makes them more interesting to rediscover, even if their quality if far from being uniformly good. You can’t really make a case for The Double Man, for instance, as being a top-notch thriller. It’s both ludicrous and boring at once, wasting several promising elements and not doing much with the assets in its custody. But here’s the thing: Yul Brynner. Yes, that proto-bald-chic icon is at play here, and he automatically makes the film better. While most casual fans will focus on the guy’s missing hair, he did have the intensity to complete the package. His protagonist here is nicely hard-edged as he plays a top-level American secret agent going to Europe to investigate the ski-related death of his son, where he finds a complex plot to replace him with an exact double. He brings much of what The Double Man needed simply to stay afloat in a sea of ludicrous plot points. After all—if you’re going to double an actor, might as well double an actor worth doubling! So, there’s definitely an interest in seeing Brynner fight Brynner, and the film does keep that going until the very end. Alas, that’s probably the one single thing it does well, because the rest of The Double Man (excepting maybe Britt Ekland) isn’t nearly as exciting. While directed by veteran Franklin J. Schaffner (whose career would really take off with his next few films) and taking place in the picturesque wintertime Alps, much of the film feels bland and unremarkable. This is further reinforced by a script that can’t seem to take its one striking central idea and execute it in a way that remains compelling: it’s all routine bits of spying business stuck together, leaving Brynner to do most of the work in making us care. There are, to be fair, far duller Cold War spying thrillers. But there’s also a sense that The Double Man is wasting more opportunities than its contemporaries.

  • The Bobo (1967)

    The Bobo (1967)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, October 2020) Any film starring Peter Sellers starts at a disadvantage with me, and The Bobo further compounds the issues by not being a very good film. A comedy about a singing matador seducing a near-professional gold-digger, it takes place in Barcelona and, if nothing else, does feature some nice 1960s eurochic period detail. Alas, it also features Sellers at his most irritating, playing up a character with plenty of quirks and, eventually, blue-dyed skin. Opposite him is then-wife Britt Ekland, looking pretty good but stuck in a not-very-good film. The Bobo tries a few things, but getting a laugh isn’t one of those. The result is overlong and tedious—no amount of period atmosphere eventually overcomes the film’s lack of reason for existing. There are times when I question whether I’m being overly harsh on Sellers due to having read his biography. Then comes along The Bobo to reassure me that I’m not.

  • The Man with the Golden Gun (1974)

    The Man with the Golden Gun (1974)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Blu Ray, September 2018) Roger Moore’s second outing as James Bond isn’t particularly good, clearly showing how the producers didn’t yet understand how to best use Moore’s debonair natural charm. The Man with the Golden Gun doesn’t manage to control its comedic impulses, sometimes trying to bring back the written Bond’s violence and at other times going way too far in silliness. It starts with a disappointing theme song that can’t manage to do honour to its fantastic signature riff (à la Live and Let Die) with on-the-nose silly lyrics and a weak vocal performance. The odd thing about the film is that it does have undeniable strengths: Moore is naturally likable, Scaramanga is a fantastic idea for a villain, Christopher Lee is exceptional as the antagonist and the corkscrew jump two thirds through the film is easily one of the most spectacular shots in Bond history. Alas, each one of those aspects is undermined by filmmakers who don’t quite understand how to showcase their assets: Bond is too often unnecessarily aggressive or rough, Scaramanga’s build-up isn’t matched by the third act, Christopher Lee isn’t given much to do, and the stunt is accompanied by a stupid slide whistle sound (and wrapped in dumb dialogue between Bond and one of the worst characters in the series), deflating the impact of the shot. The entire film is like that: Bond Girl Britt Ekland makes a strong first impression as a Foreign Service agent able to verbally spar with Bond, then devolves into an idiotic damsel-in-distress throughout the movie. The film’s third act sputters through an anticlimactic duel and a butt-activated solar death ray. Even the film’s attempt to cash on the early-seventies kung fu craze (after doing its best with Blaxploitation in the previous instalment) feels like an extraneous afterthought with an incredibly dumb payoff. I still have some enduring sympathy for the Moore-era Bonds because that’s when I first encountered the series (between Moonraker and For Your Eyes Only), but my patience was sorely tested with The Man with the Golden Gun—In fact, I almost snapped at the film’s iteration of the series’ frankly insulting seduction plot device. At least there’s a bit of a bedroom farce to take the edge off, but despite the winged cars, exotic trips through Southeast Asia and the great idea of using the Queen Mary wreck as a secret base, The Man with the Golden Gun is just frustrating. Fortunately, the next instalments of the series would learn how to best use Moore’s specific take on the character.