The High Commissioner

Taylor and Plummer work well together in a very underrated, now forgotten thriller. They play off each other very well. Taylor plays an Australian cop and of course excels. He's a human wrecking ball surrounded by dumb Bobbies and even dumber British secret agents. There's no actor today like Taylor although Hugh Jackman might come close.

The High Commissioner finds Rod Taylor playing as is native Australian for once on screen. He's an Australian cop who is pulled off regular duty by the Prime Minister of New South Wales played by Leo McKern and asked to arrest the Australian High Commissioner in London on an old charge of murder. The High Commissioner is Christopher Plummer and the victim was his first wife who died under mysterious circumstances.

It's pretty obvious to Taylor that McKern has a political agenda and Plummer is an old rival of his. Even though this extradition seems to stink on ice, Taylor does have a job to do.

Once in London there is an attempt on Plummer's life that Taylor foils and Plummer is involved in some high level negotiations with non-aligned countries that someone doesn't want to succeed. We're left pretty much in the dark as to exactly who so our imaginations can run the gamut from the Communists to some Ian Fleming type entity like SPECTRE.

The women in this film are something to see. Plummer has a devoted second wife in Lilli Palmer who would do anything to see her husband succeed, ditto his embassy secretary Carmilla Sparv. The bad girl here in the story is alluring and mysterious Daliah Lavi who runs a gambling house in London. A lot of secrets are traded here as this seems to be a kind of neutral ground in the Cold War. Lavi was one of the sexiest women of her time back in the day and she's enough to lure people back from the dead.

This film with a brief appearance in a hospital bed from Franchot Tone was his farewell role. This could have been a real hospital bed because Tone didn't look too good. A sad farewell to one of the screen's most debonair players who was always fighting for roles to display his acting rather than good looks and sense of style.

One other role that does have a sense of style involved is that of Plummer's butler Clive Revill. He finds Taylor's Aussie ways somewhat uncouth, but Revill has more to him than a sense of manners.

The High Commissioner although somewhat murky is a fast moving action flick with a surprise ending and yes as another reviewer says, similar to Alfred Hitchcock's Sabotage.

Not terrible but not good either. "Nobody Runs Forever" is a 1968 British thriller involving international politics and murder in a reasonably tortuous plot. It's also a Betty Box/Ralph Thomas picture which means it was never likely to set the world on fire; workmanlike is about the best you can say for it. What distinguishes it is the cast. The usually reliable Rod Taylor is the Australian policeman sent to London to arrest Christopher Plummer's Australian High Commissioner for the murder of his first wife and finding, when he gets there, that Plummer isn't the villian he's been painted. Lilli Palmer is Plummer's current wife. (she's the best thing in the picture), Camilla Sparv is his secretary and Daliah Lavi, a very fatale femme. Franchot Tone even pops in for a cameo appearance as does an uncredited Leo McKern. It's not particularly exciting and it is rather far-fetched and it will never rank in any list of decent conspiracy thrillers but at least it passes an entertaining couple of hours.

What a disappointment! I've enjoyed the Jon Cleary books about Scobie Malone, but there's little resemblance between him and the cinematic Malone. In the books he's a city detective, who is devoted to his wife and doesn't get involved in fisticuffs. For the film the character has been spiced up, into an outback copper who uses his fists and isn't averse to jumping into bed with a gorgeous girl, though quite what she and the film's other sex interest see in him I don't know; Taylor was 39 at the time and his face was getting puffy.

But his character's stamina is remarkable; he flies in from Australia, apparently goes straight to the Commissioner's house (rather unwisely seeking to arrest him during a black-tie reception), saves him from assassination (getting into a fight in the process), goes to a casino with one girl, leaves with another and takes her to bed. So much for jet lag! On the way back to the Commissioner's house (showing a good knowledge of London back streets), he gets beaten up by the baddies, but is still first down to breakfast! It's also remarkable that the commissioner's limo has its windscreen and headlights miraculously repaired within minutes of the assassination attempt and that one character has a touching faith in the precise timekeeping of a clock-activated bomb.

The best thing is Joseph the Butler's disdain for the uncouth Malone. And at least the film avoids being a London travelogue, though some scenes take place during the Wimbledon tennis week.

This is certainly not a bad film: the script maintains an air of uncertainty as to who is and who is not in the conspiracy to kill Plummer, there are some frantic fight scenes, a nice elegiac score, the performances are fine, putting in more emotion than usual for the genre, and the Goddess-like Daliah Lavi & the beautiful Camilla Sparv more than fill out the required "babe quotient" (as I've said before, these 60's spy thrillers are almost always a sure bet if you want to see some incredibly beautiful women). However, there is not much here that you have not seen before. Perhaps it says something about the greatness of Hitchcock that even one of his widely considered "lesser" pictures ("Topaz") is still better than this movie. (**1/2)