Blue Ice (1992)

In the opening scenes at a funeral you gotta love Michael Caine's explanation of blue ice. Typical dry British humour, which only Caine could nail down. "Blue Ice" is an often panned British espionage thriller, which I didn't mind despite its bleak and formulaic narrative with a saucy noir touch and an all-familiar hard-edge Caine performance. A former British spy now jazz club owner is asked by his mistress (who happens to be the wife of the American Ambassador) to find an old boyfriend and when he does he becomes embroiled in murder and something much more. Director Russell Mulcahy (who has always been a stylish film-maker) window dresses this thriller with jazzed up sophistication and inflated slickness amongst its suspense, brutality and sleepy London locations caught by his sweeping camera. The contrived plot is slow building, manipulating and toying with the protagonist in a fascinating manner and a sense of witty humour doesn't go astray. There's one sequence that really stood out for me, because of how surreal and nightmarish it becomes and that's the drug-induced interrogation of Caine's character. Sean Young plays it rather distantly cold as the sultry mistress. While the likes Ian Holm and Bob Hoskins have small parts. A sturdily told, if burnished 90s action thriller joint."Just put it down to blue ice".

From director Russell (Highlander) Mulcahy comes a thriller that reminds one of a throwback to the spy flicks of yesteryear. With Michael Caine in the leading role, and a supporting gallery that contains the likes of Ian Holm, Bob Hoskins, Alun Armstrong and Sean Young, you'd be right to expect something quite good of Blue Ice. But sadly the movie emerges a dispirited and bewildering mish-mash of action, sex and violence that is quite unworthy of the talents involved. Caine and famous producer Martin Bregman set up their own production company to finance this film, calling it M&M Productions – the idea was to start a series of films featuring the Harry Anders character. The critical and commercial indifference that met Blue Ice meant that no sequels were made, and the production company never released another film. (Which tells you all you need to know!)Ex-secret agent Harry Anders (Michael Caine) now runs a jazz club in London. One day he is involved in a minor car accident with sexy Stacy Mansdorf (Sean Young), wife of the American Ambassador. The two of them hit it off and soon embark on a passionate affair, with the older Harry finding himself falling uncommonly hard for this sizzling young temptress. Stacy learns about Harry's past life as a secret agent, and begs him to help her with a problem she has. Seems a former lover of hers is threatening to ruin her reputation, and she thinks Harry might be able to straighten him out. But the seemingly innocuous job is riddled with danger, and before long Harry find himself up to his neck in betrayal, murder and international arms dealings. The trail leads to Harry's old MI6 boss, Sir Hector (Ian Holm), and as the bodies start piling up the aging hero finds himself once more playing the sort of deadly cloak-and-dagger game he thought he'd left behind for good….Mulcahy throws in his usual visual flourishes (he was formerly a music video director), but no amount of fancy camera angles and moody lighting can disguise the lack of a coherent plot. Caine lends the hero an air of self-humouring charm, but it's not really one of his finest roles simply because the haphazard script doesn't allow for the development of a memorable character. The sex scenes are unintentionally funny – 59 year old Caine looks somewhat out-of-shape, yet the camera glides slowly, lovingly over his body while he is locked in a naked embrace with Young. One can't really blame the actor; it's more the fault of the director and editor for thinking (unwisely) that they can bring geriatric sex appeal to these scenes. There are flashes of competent action throughout the film – explosions, gunfights, car chases and so forth. Hardly a moment of it hangs together meaningfully and there's little sense behind most of what goes on, but at least the action is put together in a solid professional manner. Blue Ice is generally a disappointing spy thriller, never quite so bad that it reaches the level of "unwatchable" but not good enough to be worthy of recommendation.

Clearly intended to be an update to the Harry Palmer successes of the 60's right down to the character's stiff upper lip/questionable ethics superior, love of jazz, reluctant spy scenario, and same first name. Obviously, copyright required a change to last name, otherwise, this is a Harry Palmer movie.Far from the quality of Ipcress File and Funeral in Berlin, but superior story and plot compared to the subsequent Russian/Quebec produced "official Palmer movies".Caine turns in another solid performance, but potential of film limited to script gaps. Highlights would be scenes between Caine and Hoskins that are far superior to rest of film. Sean Young hopelessly miscast, so what else is new, and there is no chemistry between her and Caine.

What's Blue Ice ? According to this movie it's excrement that comes out from passing airliners . You wouldn't want to be below an overhead jet when someone flushes the loo . Come to think of it you really wouldn't want to watch this movie either unless there was absolutely nothing else onMichael Caine tries to play a Harry Palmer clone but unfortunately since it's a movie from the early 1990s it's obvious he just took the part for the pay cheque and it'd be a few more years until he started to choose his parts more carefully Bob Hoskins is another actor who basically ruined his career by not being too fussy about the quality of the scripts . BLUE ICE is probably summed up by Hoskin's being introduced by thus : There's a car chase , Hoskin's is getting pursued by men in balaclavas . This can mean only one thing - They're terrorists and this is confirmed by their Irish accents and the fact they're firing hundreds of rounds at Bob's car as they hunt their prey . Boy this could end up like THE LONG GOOD Friday , but Bob gets the better of his pursuers ( After 5 minutes of not very exciting action ) and the terrorists car ends up a right off with one of the bad guys lying on the road in very poor shape . Bob and his frightened driver approach the terrorist . Bob turns to his driver and shouts :" DO IT " Not a natural killer the driver reluctantly raises his machine gun and empties the magazine into the terrorist who now lies dead , the victim of a ruthless execution " Okay " says Bob " Get up " and the terrorist defies the laws of nature by standing to his feet . In fact all the dead terrorists come to life as Bob points to them . Has he got supernatural powers ? " Don't drive so close to the target car , you don't hesitate to fire . You ... "Ah so it wasn't a terrorist attack at all , it's a sneaky little cheat at the expense of the audience . This worked very well - In nineteen forty something . Unfortunately by the time this plays out on screen the audience were probably expecting it and it's not a spoiler so don't complain . If you see BLUE ICE and end up being disappointed with it don't complain because I told you so