The Black Windmill
Dir: Don Siegel
1974
**
There is a lot to like about Don Siegel's outdated spy thriller; The Black Windmill. It's got a great cast including Micheal Caine, Donald Pleasence, Joss Ackland, John Vernon, Clive Revill and an early performance from John Rhys-Davies. It's a lovely slice of 1970s history with some great shots of the London Underground, beautiful cars and my favorite mode of transport (sadly no longer operational) the channel crossing Hovercraft. However, Micheal Caine plays it like it's written and unfortunately his character is rather hollow. Donald Pleasence is always a joy to watch, even though his character is an odd mixture of spy novel cliches. It's really the script and the occasional attempts at humour that let the production down. For example, there is a scene whereby Caine's character, who is trying to save the life of his kidnapped son, winks playfully at a policeman in pursuit when he gets away from him and in another scene, Pleasence's character gets a name wrong and mistakenly calls a spy Sean Connery (que knowing looks from Caine and shock on Pleasence face). It is a rather stupid nod to the Bond films and it brings the production down to a fairly ridiculous level. I quite like the films faults as it makes me feel a bit nostalgic for the old spy films post-internet, whereby espionage was a bit more than pressing a few buttons but there really is nothing of any real intelligence here, just old fashioned cliched fun but I can't really give it more than 2 stars legitimately.