Was That Film Really That Bad??? The Saint (1997)

The back end of the 1990's saw several attempts to launch film franchises based upon popular 1960's TV shows. Whilst Mission: Impossible was a huge success ($457m at the box office against an $80m budget and a film series that continues to this day), Lost in Space ($136m vs $80m) was a dud and The Avengers ($54m vs $60m) was a box office bomb. What about The Saint? For the sake of this post, The Saint falls into the category of 1960's TV show remake, and yes, I am aware of the films produced from the 1930's to '50's as well as the 1940's radio show, but since they dragged Roger Moore in for a cameo in this film, I'm tying this to the 1960's TV show. I considered this film decent back in the day, though the reviews were less than complimentary. Does my original opinion hold today?

From this...

Released in 1997, this $90m production managed to recoup $169m at the box office - not terrible but nowhere near enough to justify sequels. Plot wise, we have the mysterious Simon Templar (Val Kilmer) who survives a poor school experience to become a not half bad thief and master of disguise (snigger!). After a job in Moscow almost goes south, he attracts the attention of a populist Russian would-be leader (and multi-billionaire oligarch) Ivan Tretiak (Rade Serbedzija) who wants to get his hands on a practical method of cold fusion energy generation so that he can come to the rescue of the Russian people and take over the country. This information is held by its inventor, Dr. Emma Russell (Elizabeth Shue) in Oxford and Templer decides to take the job in order to boost his savings up to $50m so he can retire. Along the way, Templar discovers he has a heart to help people, the bad guys fail, the good guys win and we end with a Roger Moore voice cameo. You'd think, what with some good location filming, decent cast and a hefty (for its time) budget, this would be a Shue (!) in for box office gold. Well...

Topical (for the 1990's) plot aside, this film should live or die by its casting of Templar and I'll be honest here, my feelings towards Kilmer are mixed. In some scenes, he looks the part and there is no doubt that the lad can act - hell, anyone with Top Secret, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, The Ghost and the Darkness, Tombstone and The Doors on their CV has demonstrated they have a range when permitted. The problem with The Saint is that, whether it be a creative decision by Kilmer or direction from Philip Noyce (who can do thrillers well - the two Harrison Ford-starring Tom Clancy adaptations in the early 1990's prove this), Kilmer's performance is weak. 

Part of the problem is that Templar is supposed to be an enigma, but that means you never really get to root for the character. If you think through this logically, he is actually quite the bastard, especially in his plan to woo Shue to get his hands on the cold fusion formula. This isn't helped by some leaden dialogue delivery. Then we have the disguises.

... to this....

You see, there's not much you can do to disguise 1990's Val Kilmer. With a jaw line that could cut (or smash) rock depending on how you used it, there's just no getting past the fact that he is very distinctive in looks. This means that the disguises that Templar effects are... troubling. These efforts are all the more obvious as we get five of them in the first thirty minutes of the movie, leading to a total of twelve by the time the credits role (and Kilmer wanted even more!). From a balding reporter/don, to a blond wigged camp German that borders on the offensive, to long haired (in the style of a Las Vegas magic act) South African/Spanish dudes, they don't convince at all. At least the wigs are good. But it gets worse - there's the grey-haired Russian that drops in to an Australian accent that is beyond all realms of decency and a Russian cleaning lady that dusts the office of Tretiak whilst he and his cronies are actually there! Still, his attempt at mirroring Tretiak almost works in the sense that if you are Mr Magoo and don't have your glasses, you could confuse the two. Overall, I think Kilmer could have been better than he is, playing it either too seriously and/or with zero emotion, at least until the end of the film where you get to see where the character could have been taken.

Shue is miscast here. She does the eccentric, nervous scientist schtick as best she can but it's unconvincing and she has zero on-screen chemistry with Kilmer. The seduction of Russell by Templar is painful to watch. Yes, I know he's playing a character playing a character but it's bad. In news to nobody who has seen this film, Russell has a bad heart - we know this because she literally tells EVERYBODY she meets. As the audience we know this the first time she tells someone so there is no reason to keep bloody repeating it!

Serbedzija is, as always, good value and as is often the case in his US movie appearances, has a twinkle in his eye playing the bad guy. Less so is Valery Nikolev, playing Tretiak's son, Ilya. It's not his acting, which is decent. No, it's the decision to give him a cane to twirl and a fashion sense that veers between "Interview with a Vampire" and an early 90's pop video. All he really needs is a mustache and he's your panto villain right there. 

The rest of the cast contains a veritable list of British actors who do a good job overall: Henry Goodman, Michael Byrne, Charlotte Cornwall, Tommy Flanagan, David Schneider, Emily Mortimer, Julian Rhind-Tutt and Peter Guinness pepper the scenes, though the meatiest secondary role goes to local lad, Alun Armstrong, whose (not quite bumbling) Inspector really does need to be the foil for Templar to play against. Sadly, it's only teased at the end of the film.

...and this...

Re-watching The Saint revealed more than a few flaws outside of the acting, the worst of which is the pacing. The beginning of the film shows a small boy, fascinated by the Templars, suffering the wrath of a Catholic school and the untimely death of a another pupil. Ok, that's good as character set up but by starting the film with such a slow opening, it's not exactly driving people into the story. Fast forward to the present day and after the initial fun of the Moscow theft, the film bogs down in Templar's attempt to get the cold fusion plans from Russell. As noted above, there is zero chemistry and these scenes (roughly 20 minutes of the total run time!) suck the life out of the film. Once you get past that, it livens up again but by then, the damage is done and overall, the pace is sedentary enough to send some people to sleep.

Then there is the edit that was released. When test audiences saw the first cut, they didn't like the ending - this is one where Russell is killed three quarters of the way through and Templar goes on a revenge quest. Fearing this would harm the film's box office, a new ending was shot (at some expense) and is the one you see here. Is it better than the original? No idea, never seen that original cut, but the ending we do have leaves room for a sequel that never came. There were also accusations of Kilmer being a bit of an arse on set but these have never been proven, though the subsequent bad press for both re-shoots and off-screen behaviour can't have helped the film either.

The thing is, there is humour here and when it works, it works well - the ending in Oxford is cute and I'd like to think they would have continued in that vein for a follow up. The problem with some of the humour is that it's based on the disguises and you either need to suspend disbelief or wonder why they didn't just go down the comic route completely (the aforementioned cleaning lady being the nadir).

... to this and he can't tell the difference.

Not a flaw but more of an observation, is the technology of the time. The old Apple Powerbook, a digital camera that, compared to today's kit, looks like something out of the Flintstones and the very heavy use of a Nokia Communicator, the most desirable "smart" phone before the term was coined. How times have moved on!

Where the film does score highly with me is the music - with one exception. With tracks from the likes of The Chemical Brothers, Moby, Fluke, Everything But The Girl and Underworld, this is a proper 1990's retro music fest right here. Even Orbital's cover of The Saint theme isn't bad but suffers in the same way as Apollo 440's Lost in Space theme and Larry Mullen Jr/Adam Clayton's mix on Mission: Impossible's iconic theme - there's not much you can do to stretch a minute long TV tune into a three to four minute single. However, the best, and worst, are to come. They manage to cram in "6 Underground" by the Sneaker Pimps and whilst it's a good track, it's literally crow-barred in with such a lack of finesse that it even plays over some of the incidental music. I mean, WTF? The film gets a reprieve with it's biggest music track, "Out of my Mind" by Duran Duran. This song is perfect for the film, from the tone to the lyrics, and as it plays out over the credits, it feels just right. Certainly, this eclipses film songs from the period such as U2's efforts with Batman Forever ("Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me") and Tomb Raider ("Elevation"). On a side note, for the latter film, Nine Inch Nail's "Deep" was by far the better song and criminally ignored. On a second side note, the Bond film Tomorrow Never Dies has a much better theme song that was considered but not chosen (though it was on the soundtrack CD), "Surrender" by k.d. lang - a much, much better Bond song than Sheryl Crow's.

So, The Saint. Not as good as I remembered and with flaws that a sequel could have addressed, freed of the baggage of establishing backstories and motivations. Having said that, I still have a soft spot for it and I still get a pang of regret as the credits roll that they didn't get a chance to do another one. Overall then, this is a film that really does warrant the description of "Disappointing". It deserved to be better and it's a damn shame it wasn't.