The Holcroft Covenant (1985, Michael Caine, Anthony Andrews, Victoria Tennant, Lilli Palmer) – Classic Movie Review 8526

Director John Frankenheimer’s 1985 The Holcroft Covenant is a risible political thriller based on Robert Ludlum’s potboiling yarn about the clash over the fate of a $4,000 million potentially dangerous bequest by a German General chief Nazi, who was Noel Holcroft (Michael Caine)’s father.

Noel Holcroft (Caine), now a foreign-born American citizen working in New York City as an architect, is asked to give away the cash to make up for the Nazi atrocities. But people are out to kill him and it is all a front in a plot to re-establish the Nazi Reich.

Michael Caine stars in The Holcroft Covenant (1985).

Teflon actor Caine emerges unscathed from the maelstrom that does not manage an ounce of credibility, and it is good if peculiar to see Lilli Palmer as his mother Althene Holcroft, but lesser star players Anthony Andrews (Johann von Tiebolt / Jonathan Tennyson) and Victoria Tennant (Helden von Tiebolt / Helden Tennyson) cannot rely on their usual charisma to see them through.

With the dismal screenplay and direction, four of cinema’s most respected figures come a proper cropper: George Axelrod, Edward Anhalt and John Hopkins’s confused script doesn’t make the story at all believable and director Frankenheimer injects no tension or excitement.

Watch only for Caine and a deliriously bad script that had them helplessly laughing in the aisles at the London press show.

The Holcroft Covenant is hokum at its most clap-trap.

Also in the cast are Mario Adorf, Michael Lonsdale, Bernard Hepton, Richard Munch, Carl Rigg, Andrew Bradford, Shane Rimmer and Michael Balfour.

© Derek Winnert 2019 Classic Movie Review 8526

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