Caine holds the screen effortlessly (despite those ugly aviator specs he liked), but there’s something laborious about the spy-game thriller he’s been inserted into. This should have been a stone cold classic: Caine in his early-70s pomp, Don Siegel directing, more gritty Harry Palmerisms. He gets the required feels, even if he is a bit overshadowed by Nolan’s directorial fireworks. The Prestige (2006)Ĭaine played third fiddle to Hugh Jackman and Christian Bale in Christopher Nolan’s fifth feature, as another avuncular mentor figure who is given the all-important clip-worthy montage that explains how magic tricks work. One of Caine’s better attempts to resuscitate his Harry Palmer persona: a cold-war thriller adapted from a Frederick Forsyth novel that managed to beat the Berlin wall coming down by a mere two years. Trigger warnings very much required nowadays. But it was a real out-there choice for Caine, showing he was willing to break the boundaries of what was considered a safe role. Dressed to Kill (1980)īrian De Palma accumulated mucho trash points with this Psycho homage, even if its roll-up of dissociative identity disorder and trans-baiting, suspect back then, looks much worse now. On some level Caine seems totally out of place, but that actually suits the bonkers material. Long considered a disaster – not least by Caine himself, who said he was forced into making it for legal reasons – this now comes across as the nuttiest of psychedelic period pieces, alternately baffling and flabbergasting. Caine skilfully brings out the inner desolation of his character even if the surrounding film’s attempt to humanise the robbers never quite hits high gear. King of Thieves (2018)Ĭaine issued a public call to be cast in a movie about the Hatton Garden job, and the result was pretty classy, compared with most of the geezer-gangster landfill of the past two decades. Broad comedy mugging isn’t really Caine’s strength, but he gets through it fine. It was perhaps inevitable that Caine would show up in Mike Myers’ 60s-spy spoof: he plays Nigel, Austin and Evil’s dad, who is still the bum-pinching dinosaur of yore. Photograph: Allstar/Cinetext/New Line 45. With Beyoncé and Mike Myers in Austin Powers in Goldmember. Pulp regained some critical credibility in the 90s (not least because of its title similarity to Pulp Fiction) and its labyrinthine literary musings look more interesting now. Pulp (1972)Ĭaine didn’t think much of Mike Hodges’ follow-up to Get Carter it’s very much not the lean, mean neo-noir that they managed for Carter. His role, as the boffin running a super-secret space agency in Nolan’s ambitious attempt to emulate Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, is a sort of autopilot-gravitas. Interstellar (2014)Ĭhristopher Nolan’s ancestor worship has given Caine a late-career fillip. Caine and co-star Anthony Quinn are namechecking leads Deray and Ventura, a killer-for-cash and American agent out to take down James Mason’s drug baron. The Marseille Contract (1974)Ī pretty straightforward rip-off of The French Connection, but entertainingly paying homage to the great French gangster movie tradition. Caine is the prof who works out how to destroy them. The Swarm is actually pretty nifty: an insect-based carve-up from disaster-master Irwin Allen, featuring killer bees cutting a swathe through Texas. Probably the best – or least bad – of Caine’s late-70s-into-the-80s do-anything-for-money period, which included Beyond the Poseidon Adventure and Ashanti.
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