The Palmer Files: Herren der Apokalypse

God help us! Another continuity faux-pas. In the scene of Connery greeting General Kornikov,he says he has been in Russia before and answers the General with "Very pleased (to meet you)". Nothing wrong with the words(in Russian) but they would make any Russian language student cringe - talk about butcher the language. Later, "Tatiana's" father walks across a bridge followed by Connery in a Volvo, ostensibly from the Hermitage - except that he's walking toward Nevskii Prospekt, not away ( I don't know, maybe I misunderstood the scene). Still, it's the worst example of Russian gangsterism versuses the spy world ever made. Want reality, try going there and trying to find someone to trust.

Other reviews speak well of Caine's performance but I found him well below par. To be fair he has a dreadful script, an improbable storyline and no other star to live up to, but he looks just old, tired, (which he probably felt at the time), and miscast and it shows. The Harry Palmer of The Ipcress File fame is no more. Bullet to Beijing is better, quite a bit better, but that is also well below Caine's best. Connery is a nice looking young man, like his dad was, but his acting skills are modest. The stars of this film are the Russians! They give it a touch of authenticity and some can act.

It is not hard to see why Disney dumped both these films. Harry Palmer done in by Bond was the phrase I read at the time. However on a final and slightly positive note: both films make grade B, require little thought and even less imagination. If you have nothing better to do then have a look to see how far the mighty can fall. You will sleep well after wards if you are not asleep before the end!

Every film series runs it's course eventually. Sometimes it's the audience that gets fatigued and votes with it's wallet by not attending the latest sequel and other times the latest sequel runs out of ideas and falls flat.

Harry Palmers audience did the first in 1968 with the ''Billion Dollar Brain'' - a smart adaption of Deighton's novel which itself was quite outlandish in comparison to the film versions of the ''Ipcress File'' and ''Funeral in Berlin''.

The second time a rejuvenated Harry Palmer series ran out of steam was in this film during which the latter happened.

Come the mid 1990's with dwindling good acting opportunities for Michael Caine and a new appetite for spy thrillers from cinema-goers two more Harry Palmer films were committed to celluloid. The first ''Bullet to Beijing'' was a nice if flawed reunion movie for an older Harry Palmer but it's sequel here ''Midnight in St. Petersburg gets swiftly derailed by a bankrupt script and lower budget.

The problem is that it very much plays like a remake of it's immediate predecessor only with a much smaller scope and budget. It even revolves around a film studio location in it's later stages...

The plot is Harry Palmer has set up a private investigation agency in Russia and he has to search for some stolen Plutonion as well as his assistants ballerina girlfriend who has been abducted. The two story strands come together in the films finale at midnight in St. Petersburg.

Michael Caine is always entertaining as Harry Palmer but he looks bored here. Some of the supporting actors are quite good and some are just plain bad. The dialogue is very poor at times and it's all quite forgettable.

That said if you don't compare it to the other films in the series it is reasonably entertaining overall and there are a few genuinely good scenes in the film. But it was definitely a sequel too many for Harry Palmer I'm sure most would agree.

Compared to other Harry Palmer films, Midnight in Saint Petersburg is rather mediocre: rambling script, nothing-special cast (apart from two Sir Michaels: Caine and Gambon), uneven change of scenes. The latter is most annoying as you lose track of events sometimes and well performed scenes vary with cheaply filmed chases or scuffles.

The biggest value of this film to me is the filming location - Saint Petersbourg - as I spent several years there studying just some years before the film was shot. Thus, most of places were familiar to me - well, that could be a reason my focus could transfer from watching the events into watching the background, this beautiful city.

If you are eager to see all Palmer-related films, then do it and include the film in question. Otherwise, you might feel bored.

After you've watched Bullet to Beijing, in which Michael Caine plays the famous fictional spy Harry Palmer, go out and rent the sequel Midnight in Saint Petersburg. Technically, you can watch this one by itself, but it starts up when the other ended, and so the ending of the first movie would be spoiled.

Once again, Michael Caine finds himself mixed up with bad guys in Russia. He's trying to stop them from acquiring plutonium, and together with Jason Connery—who's just as adorable and endearing as he was in the first film—they head back to Saint Petersburg to save the world! One of my favorite scenes is when Michael finds a bomb in his office. He throws it out of the window, but a dog picks it up and starts running around with it. Michael and his Russian colleagues are shouting at the dog in different languages, trying to get him to drop the bomb, but he runs down an alley seconds before the explosion. Everyone is pretty depressed—and so is the audience—until the dog trots out of the alley, unscathed! Very tense, but with a happy ending.

I liked these later Harry Palmer movies because they're pretty light and fun, without a lot of heavy drama or complicated plot points. Check them out for an afternoon marathon!