For a while in the 1960s, tv networks like ABC and CBS briefly tried to be major players in the movies*, but they rarely got ‘First Look’ at the best material. Dog-eared scripts working their way down from established Hollywood studios was more like it. Something that helps explain this, a political thriller, not without potential, but showing fingerprints and coffee cup stains from rival development execs who’d rejected it months ago. Fortunately, star Rod Taylor is such a darn likable chap, even weathered and a bit thick, as the Aussie detective plucked from the Outback to pick up Australian High Commissioner Christopher Plummer in London on an old, trumped up murder charge, you swallow the narrative bait. It’s really political payback (from an uncredited Leo McKern), but Plummer gets a short stay to finish up his international conference. Taylor agrees, but the shit hits the fan when a series of assassination attempts breaks out. (One at Wimbledon, very MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE, a hoot, especially when they go right back to tennis action post-shooting.) But then, the lighter tone of the first half tries but fails to turn dark in the second. Lili Palmer looks elegant as Plummer’s mature wife (15 yrs older and dying of cancer); Camilla Sparv is his loyal/sexy assistant; Daliah Lavi is a spy with a shifty nature and shifting skin tone; Calvin Lockhart is the cool dude/foreign diplomat; and a delightful Clive Revill is both comic relief in the first half and dead serious business in the second where he's even funnier. Plus Franchot Tone, dying of lung cancer at the time, playing an American Ambassador dying of lung cancer. Director Ralph Thomas is all thumbs at action, but gets his laughs, even the unwanted ones.
ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *ABC’s initial film production unit ran from 1965 to 1972. This British RANK product a probable pick-up to meet a release quota guarantee. Nowadays, Disney owns the joint.
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