The Fourth Protocol (1987)

User Rating:

6.3/10   

Director:

John Mackenzie

Writers:

George Axelrod (writer)
Richard Burridge (additional material)

Release Date:

28 August 1987 (USA)

Genre:

Thriller

Tagline:

If the Fourth Protocol is ever breached, there would be no warning, just a nuclear explosion from a bedsitter...The unthinkable has just begun...

Plot:

KGB agent, Major Valeri Petrofsky has been reassigned at the request of the KGB Chairman for a secret mission...

Plot Keywords:

Russian | Atomic Bomb | Spy | Military Base | NATO

Awards:

1 nomination

Cast

Michael Caine	...	John Preston
Pierce Brosnan	...	Valeri Petrofsky / James Edward Ross
Ned Beatty	...	Borisov / Pavel Petrovic
Joanna Cassidy	...	Irina Vassilievna
Julian Glover	...	Brian Harcourt-Smith
Michael Gough	...	Sir Bernard Hemmings
Ray McAnally	...	General Karpov
Ian Richardson	...	Sir Nigel Irvine
Anton Rodgers	...	George Berenson
Caroline Blakiston	...	Angela Berenson
Joseph Brady	...	Carmichael
Betsy Brantley	...	Eileen McWhirter
Sean Chapman	...	Captain Lyndhurst
Matt Frewer	...	Tom McWhirter
Jerry Harte	...	Professor Krilov

Runtime:

119 min

Country:

UK

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1

Sound Mix:

Dolby

Certification:

Iceland:14 | Australia:M | Netherlands:12 (2002) | Netherlands:16 (VHS/DVD rating) (2001) | Finland:K-16 | UK:15 | USA:R | West Germany:16

Filming Locations:

Birmingham International Arena, Birmingham, West Midlands, England, UK

Company:

Fourth Protocol

Trivia:

Last cinema feature of John Horsley.

Goofs:

Revealing mistakes: The armorer only loaded one blank into Ross's pistol before he shoots Irina in bed after their tryst, as the slide is seen to lock back on firing, indicating a now empty magazine.

Quotes:

George Berenson: [George just found out that his South African contact is a Russian spy] Oh my God... what have I done?
Sir Nigel Irvine: You've betrayed your country. You've passed on untold numbers of military secrets to Moscow, and endangered the lives of British men and women. And I'd say you've weakened NATO. Perhaps irretrievably.
George Berenson: Oh my God...
Sir Nigel Irvine: Just you, and your schoolboy politics, and your idiotically conceited faith in your own importance.
[pause]
Sir Nigel Irvine: Now some of our more muscular colleagues would like to lock you in a cell and go to work on you with a carving knife and a pair of pliers. The rest would like to feed you to the newspapers and throw whatever's left into prison for 20 years. It's a tricky choice.
[Smiles ever so slightly, pauses]
Sir Nigel Irvine: However, this is what you will do. You shall resume your special relationship with Moscow, but this time I will be supplying the papers. Do you understand?
[George nods]
Sir Nigel Irvine: And later, when you are finished, we will decide what to do with you.
[...]

Movie Connections:

References "The Muppet Show" (1976)

absorbing thriller

I was quite surprised to see that this movie got a 5.9 rating. I think that it's a lot better than that. Brosnan is good, the plot is sufficiently tricky to be interesting, and Caine delivers the kind of reliable, excellent performance that you can count on (at least when the movie isn't total junk -- he only seems to phone it in when the movie is entirely hopeless). The ending is a little abrupt, but I can't find any fault with it other than that. (The cast is uniformly strong, too.) Maybe people underrate the movie because the movie is low-budget. It looks like a British TV-movie, and maybe it was, but I find it easy to get past the production values when the acting is good.

I've seen it twice, and it holds up to a second viewing.