The globe-trotting COVERT ASSASSIN is an elaborate thriller that chokes on its own plot entanglements. As is often the case with international co-productions, the film seems strangely sluggish, as though someone were slowly translating the meaning of the lines off-camera to the rest of the
cast.
Forced to resign after his maverick handling of a hijacking crisis, ex-NATO task force commander Colonel Peter Stride (Roy Scheider) finds himself embroiled in terrorist intrigue involving weapons sold to anti-American countries. Wealthy, sensual Baroness Magda Altman (Patricia Millardet)
persuades Stride to undertake a search for Caliph, a shadowy terrorist responsible for both the murder of Magda's weapons-magnate husband and the hostage drama that cost Stride his career.
Stride sets himself up on his brother's estate, but his daughter Melissa is kidnapped by Irish mercenaries in league with Caliph. Worse yet, American spybuster Colonel Parker (Sam Wanamaker), Stride's former superior at NATO, confuses matters by making a convincing case that Caliph is really the
Baroness Magda.
Playing cat and mouse with the alluring Magda, Stride barely manages to rescue his daughter from the kidnappers, who demand Colonel Parker in exchange for the girl. Stride finally realizes that a trail of illicit anti-tank weapons that he and his men have been following leads to his own brother,
who confesses to a lucrative association with the death merchant and sets up a rendezvous between Stride and Caliph. Tricking the paranoid mastermind into a meeting, Stride nearly loses his life but is surprised to receive help from Magda, her bodyguard Karl (Richard Ridings), and NATO official
Colin Noble (Christopher Bucholz), who has figured out that Caliph is none other than Colonel Parker. The heroes struggle valiantly against the megalomaniac, who dies when his helicopter is shot down, crashes on top of him, and explodes.
Featuring enough conspiracies for an entire Cold War Spy Movie Festival and a host of confusing subplots to boot, COVERT ASSASSIN is undermined by an erratic editing style that allows some scenes to run too long and cuts others short. While the action sequences often pack a punch, the suspense
is constantly undermined by cutting away to another global trouble spot. Viewers are whisked from city to island to airport to military base to country home until COVERT ASSASSIN feels less like an espionage movie than a tour of scenic sites by location scouts. So much effort is expended in making
Magda appear guilty that the final revelation about Parker--who's not a very compelling master of menace, anyway--is anti-climactic. (Graphic violence, profanity, adult situations.) leave a comment
