Surprisingly incoherent and boring

Really Surprised!

One of the best films i have seen

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

After you've watched Bullet to Beijing, in which Michael Caine plays the famous fictional spy Harry Palmer, go out and rent the sequel Midnight in Saint Petersburg. Technically, you can watch this one by itself, but it starts up when the other ended, and so the ending of the first movie would be spoiled.Once again, Michael Caine finds himself mixed up with bad guys in Russia. He's trying to stop them from acquiring plutonium, and together with Jason Connery—who's just as adorable and endearing as he was in the first film—they head back to Saint Petersburg to save the world! One of my favorite scenes is when Michael finds a bomb in his office. He throws it out of the window, but a dog picks it up and starts running around with it. Michael and his Russian colleagues are shouting at the dog in different languages, trying to get him to drop the bomb, but he runs down an alley seconds before the explosion. Everyone is pretty depressed—and so is the audience—until the dog trots out of the alley, unscathed! Very tense, but with a happy ending.I liked these later Harry Palmer movies because they're pretty light and fun, without a lot of heavy drama or complicated plot points. Check them out for an afternoon marathon!

Compared to other Harry Palmer films, Midnight in Saint Petersburg is rather mediocre: rambling script, nothing-special cast (apart from two Sir Michaels: Caine and Gambon), uneven change of scenes. The latter is most annoying as you lose track of events sometimes and well performed scenes vary with cheaply filmed chases or scuffles. The biggest value of this film to me is the filming location - Saint Petersbourg - as I spent several years there studying just some years before the film was shot. Thus, most of places were familiar to me - well, that could be a reason my focus could transfer from watching the events into watching the background, this beautiful city.If you are eager to see all Palmer-related films, then do it and include the film in question. Otherwise, you might feel bored.

"Bullet To Beijing" was a more than decent attempt to revive and update the character of brains-before-brawn spy Harry Palmer for the post-Cold War era. This follow-up, filmed back-to-back with its predecessor with much of the same cast, does not live up to the same standards; it's uninspired and overly talky. Much of it consists of Harry Palmer going around and talking with each of the returning characters, without really getting anywhere until the last 20 minutes. Palmer will always be one of Michael Caine's trademark roles, but this time he doesn't seem to be as "into" it as before. Good location work in St. Petersburg cannot make up for the film's utter lack of narrative drive. ** out of 4.

Well, as a movie, it isn't that great, very predictable, specially who the bad one is. How ever, I have been going to St Petersburg just about every year since 1998, but not this year :( and it really made me miss her.What I liked about the movie was that it should a lot of real Russians (like at the Circus) and had many Russian actors, and pretty realistically portrayed St Petersburg, including the feuds between the mafias at that time, and the checking for weapons at some popular restaurants. I also recognized the interior of the Nevskii Palac which has since changed hands but is still a ***** hotel. I stayed across the street once and around the corner once for a week in Russian style flats for what they want for a night ;-) I don't speak fluent Russian, but I know enough to understand that he was told to meet the guy that was shot at the Leningradky Vokzahl (railway station) by the statue of Lenin. This is a famous place in SPB, one of the few public statues of Lenin still existing and people jokingly mention that he looks like he is trying to flag down a 'cab' (not an official one of course, just any car, including an army vehicle, that might be headed in the right direction). So when he makes the misleading statements about going to Moskow and shows up at the Moskovsky Vokszhal I was wondering what they would do until he took another cab to the right place. Rarely do I get the 'insider's thrill' like this'.Not a movie to watch if you want great cinema, but one to see for glimpses of real Russia. I also liked that the Russians were not the bad guys per se and vice versa.Could have been a much better movie. I was not surprised to learn it was 'made for TV'. Michael Caine was Michael Caine, which is to say the character fits him like a glove, but he did seem to be mailing his performance in. Needed a much stronger director I think.