On B List of Movie Reviews

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Billion Dollar Brain (1967)

Rate: 3
Viewed: 7/25

7/25: That's why I have Ken Russell on my Worst Directors list.

The man sucks, having effectively killed off the Harry Palmer franchise. Michael Caine had this to say: "Russell was an emotional genius. Billion Dollar Brain is a highly complicated thriller which needs a draftsman. The last thing you need is an emotional genius. We never quite realized we had a lunatic genius on our hands. He was the least ideal man to do a thriller. What he has is this passion to make thundering great messes." If I were him, I would nix the genius part.

In other words, why didn't Harry Saltzman bring back Guy Hamilton? The director knew what he was doing in Funeral in Berlin. Billion Dollar Brain never makes sense. Hence, it's appropriate that Donald Sutherland, at one point, asked, "What's going on?" In many ways, it feels like everybody was making up shit along with bad editing. The last thirty minutes is a perfection summation of Ken Russell's directorial style.

Michael Caine as Harry Palmer? Ha! He's more like an incompetent dunce who's lured into a trap without understanding what's going on. There have been plenty of times he should've died but was somehow allowed to live. By the way, it's Françoise Dorléac's final film as she, who's Catherine Deneuve's sister, died in a car accident during the same year.

All in all, Billion Dollar Brain is an embarrassment in the espionage genre.

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