Better Late Then Never

A waste of 90 minutes of my life

If you're interested in the topic at hand, you should just watch it and judge yourself because the reviews have gone very biased by people that didn't even watch it and just hate (or love) the creator. I liked it, it was well written, narrated, and directed and it was about a topic that interests me.

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

BILLION DOLLAR BRAIN is the third in the Harry Palmer trilogy of spy movies and a far drop in quality from the excellent first in the series, THE IPCRESS FILE. The film feels very much like an inferior Bond movie which is odd given that the whole reason behind the series was to be an 'anti Bond' with a greater emphasis on seriousness and realism. The story sees Palmer come out of retirement to go after a mysterious megalomaniac bent on world domination, with the story set in an icy Finland for the most part.This was an early film in the career of director Ken Russell and his inexperience shows. Some of the staging is okay but the action feels oddly flat and lifeless and the actors struggle to make their characters interesting, Karl Malden a cast in point. Sure, the story does benefit from an entertaining and original choice of villain, but everything that happens feels clichéd and oddly muted, and the end result is merely average.

I was watching this movie on evening as nothing was on and was very amused. The movie had a certain grittiness and at the same time was fun and quirky and that is the appeal of this movie. The locations in Finland were terrific. The story had a lot of twists and turns and a lot of double and triple crosses which made the movie fun. Everyone in the movie looked like they enjoyed making the movie and it shows on screen. The movie started with the Micheal Caine character being a private detective who gets a strange computer generated call and the movie ignited from there. Though one thing i noticed in the 60's that it was not east vs west somehow a lot of the spy movies had a sinister third party manipulating behind the scenes and this can be also seen with spectre in the bond series too but that is part of the charm of these type of movies. The leading lady is also the sister of the iconic Catherine Denueve and she is as fetching as her sister too bad of her demise in real life..Though a nice popcorn movie and i would watch it again.

I enjoyed both The Ipcress File and Funeral in Berlin but not Billion Dollar Brain. Whilst the first two films in the trilogy had a feeling of realism about them, Billion Dollar Brain felt like it was just a send-up of the spy world(which maybe is was meant to be). From the opening James Bond type titles I felt that it was being played tongue-in-cheek. We even have a wild eyed maniac type character who wants to take over the world in the form of Ed Begley. Perhaps if Ipcress and Funeral had not been serious visits into the espionage world than Billion Dollar might be viewed differently.Finally, the soundtrack to this film is pretty bad, which is a shame as it was written by the usually excellent Richard Rodney Bennet who wrote the wonderful soundtrack for the Julie Christie film 'Far From the Madding Crowd'.

Harry Palmer has left the British Secret Service and become a private detective.He has to deliver a thermos flask to an old friend in Helsinki.Soon he finds that he has entered the world of a Texas billionaire who thinks he can bring about a popular uprising in the Soviet Union with a help of a sophisticated computer.Billion Dollar Brain (1967) is directed by Ken Russell.It's based on Len Deighton's novel.This is the third of the Harry Palmer movies.Michael Caine was born to play this part.Karl Malden is terrific as Leo Newbigen.Francoise Dorleac does good job as Anya.It's pretty enjoyable to watch the over the top performance of Ed Begley.Guy Doleman plays the part of Colonel Ross and Oskar Homolka is Colonel Stok.In a small part we see Donald Sutherland playing a Scientist at computer.Also Åke Lindman and Pirkko Mannola are seen in the movie.Åke gets to use the machine gun.The movie is interesting for me mostly because it was mostly shot in Finland.It's pretty great to watch Finland as it was then.Also the the moments taking place in Riga were actually shot in Porvoo.There are some nice moments in this film.The first time we see Malden when he is in the sauna.Very Finnish.It get even better when Anya joins him there.The ice breaking under those vehicles is pretty amazing.For Finns this is almost a must-see.