Pity poor super spy Sean Dillon, who just wants to come in from the cold! As in the other three entries in this series, which premiered on cable, adapted from Jack Higgins's novels, antihero Dillon is cajoled out of retirement; no wonder that, as Dillon, Rob Lowe looks so tired and primed
for redundancy. The film premiered on Showtime in 1996, and made its debut on home video in 1998.
British secret service chief Sir Charles Ferguson (Kenneth Cranham) and his second-in-command Hannah Bernstein (Deborah Moore) inveigle former mercenary Sean Dillon (Rob Lowe) into protecting the visiting US president from Irish terrorists at a peace conference. However, the terrorists actual
target is the Chinese Minister Chiao Lin (Christopher Greet). In the process of thwarting the assassination, Dillon gets stabbed. While Dillon recuperates, he is informed by Hong Kong businessman Yuan Tao (Richard Rees), a British ally, that the assassination attempt was plotted by Mafiosi hoping
to seesaw financial leverage after China's takeover of Hong Kong.
It is revealed that, in the past, Lord Mountbatten once signed an extension of British sovereignty in Hong Kong with then-rebel leader Mao Tse Tung; that a WWII document guarded by Major Ian Campbell disappeared in a plane crash over the late Campbell's estate. Now, Hong Kong crimelords Don
Giovanni (Claude Blanchard) and his nephew Carl Morgan (Jurgen Prochnow) covet the Chungking document.
Persuaded by Sir Charles to work for Her Majesty and Yuan Tao, Dillon curries the favor of Morgan's stepdaughter Asta (Ingeborg Dapkunaite). All the principals converge for a weekend at the estate of Lady Campbell (Yvonne Antrobus), the late Major's daughter. After Dillon dives into the Campbell's
loch and retrieves the Chungking document, traitorous Asta seizes it at gunpoint. At a subsequent Mafia rendezvous with Communist representative Lee Ho Chiang (Hi Ching), Lee, Don Giovanni, and Morgan are gunned down by Dillon and the police. After Dillon retrieves the document during the melee,
Asta escapes to London but gets stabbed by Sir Charles before she can kill Dillon. At the airport, as Sir Charles hands over the Chungking document to Yuan Tao, the historic covenant gets sucked up into a plane engine.
That climactic bit of irony suggests cynical bemusement, but will irk viewers who sit through 96 minutes of confusing intrigue only to have the scriptwriter wimp out on grounds of historical accuracy. One tires of author Jack Higgins's penchant for inventing fictitious documents (e.g., the Windsor
Protocol, which figured in the next two films in this made-for-cable series, JACK HIGGINS' THUNDER POINT and JACK HIGGINS' THE WINDSOR PROTOCOL). ON DANGEROUS GROUND also suffers from script-overload upfront; the IRA assaults should have been tightened. Ultimately, Higgins's historical revisionism
is too facile; this Sean Dillon action workout bandies about big ideas and lets them do the work of an out-of-shape, underdeveloped narrative. (Graphic violence, profanity, adult situations.) leave a comment
