Puppet on a Chain (1972)

Cinema's greatest boat chase is found in "Puppet on a Chain", a 1971 thriller directed by Geoffrey Reeve. The boat chase in question, however, was directed by Don Sharp. Kinetic, tightly edited and cleverly organised, it was stylistically a good 30 years ahead of action movie trends. Its dramatic juxtaposition of noise and silence, and its John Frankenheimer inspired filming of breakneck motion, would also prove an influence on a young George Lucas.Unfortunately the aforementioned "boat scene" occurs after about an hour and a half of tedious "cops and robbers" storytelling, all of which can be safely skipped by film aficionados. The film was written by novelist Alistair Maclean". Standard 1970s crime movie fare, it trivialises and distorts the complex class, geopolitical, economic and even philosophical issues surrounding both policing and the drug trade.6/10 - Worth one viewing.

Puppet on a Chain starts in L.A. where three people are killed by a professional hit-man after stealing some imported heroin... American narcotics cop Paul Sherman (Sven-Bertil Taube) is sent to Amsterdam to investigate their murders & the illegal importation of heroin from Holland into the US, a sort of kill two birds with one stone operation. Sherman's contact in Amsterdam Jimmy Duclos (Drewe Henley) is assassinated at Schipol Airport before they even meet so he's on the back foot straight away, then he realises he is being followed so the bad guy's know he's there. He meets his other contact undercover officer Maggie (Barbara Parkins) who says Jimmy's girlfriend might know something & so begins Sherman's dangerous investigation into one of Amsterdam's biggest drug smuggling operations & the people behind it...This British production was directed by Geoffrey Reeve although the end credits say that Don Sharp directed the boat sequence & 'additional scenes' which never sounds great & is a low rent James Bond sort of thing, it's an OK time waster but fairly forgettable when all said & done. The script by Alistair MacLean again with 'additional material' by Don Sharp & Paul Wheeler doesn't quite know what it wants to be & the influence of three different writers all pulling in opposite directions occasionally show's, is it an action film? Well not really because there are only two or three sequences you could describe as action orientated. Is it a thriller? Well again not really as it's not that thrilling or gritty or tough enough. In truth it's somewhere between the two & never quite succeeds at being either, I must admit that Puppet on a Chain has one of the most predictable plot twists I've ever seen. I guessed it within twenty minutes & I was absolutely right, I just thought about how a writer would try & 'surprise' the audience by making the person least likely to be the bad guy turn out to be the bad guy & it's just far too obvious & as a plot device was way past it's sell by date even in 1971! To be fair the writing & lack of decent character's really don't help matters, there is also a strangely out of place moralistic sequence in which Sherman takes a trip around an Amsterdam morgue to look at dead drug addicts for no real reason which I suppose was a message to anyone watching that drugs are bad!Director's Reeve & Sharp do OK, I must admit I love the Amsterdam location as it's unusual & I've been there myself on a few occasions. To be brutally honest it's not the safest place in the world & I speak from personal experience but it can be a pretty cool place all the same, it's just a shame about all the drunks, the people high on drugs & the prostitution the three of which can make for volatile situations... The action is brief here & not really worth mentioning apart from a 10 minute long boat chase through the canal's of Amsterdam, this may initially sound exciting but when you have one boat in front & another one behind chasing it it becomes tedious quickly as there's not much else happening. The violence is tame & the best scene in the film the opening long continuous shot of the assassin driving up to a house, entering it & killing three people inside in one swift camera movement. There's also a silly James Bond moment when a villain instead of just killing Sherman there & then he rigs an elaborate trap for Sherman in which he is going to die from the high pitched sounds made by chiming clocks! Sherman manages to escape James Bond fashion too.Technically the film is alright, the locations are nice enough & it has reasonable production values throughout. It's filmed in a bland sort of way, it's watchable but forgettable. The acting is alright by a largely unknown, by me anyway, cast.Puppet on a Chain is an OK James Bond type action thriller that doesn't quite come off as exciting or thrilling & it is one of the most predictable films I've ever seen with one of the most obvious twists. Nothing special.

Soulless, silly international co-production boasts picture postcard cinematography in Amsterdam and other locales but is too generic and clichéd otherwise to drum up much excitement. The nominal hero is as stiff and expressionless as a Ken doll, and the vaunted boat chase -- staple of the trailer and TV commercials of the time -- is technically well-executed but out of place in what was supposed to be an adaptation of MacLean's dark, complex tale of drug smuggling, murder and espionage.This is one of those many cases where producers obtained rights to a valuable property and then jettisoned 90% of what made it memorable or effective; particularly inexplicable in this case, as MacLean is listed as one of the screenwriters! A good (or bad) example of those infamous multi-national 'tax shelter' film productions of the 60's/early 70's.For better MacLean, look to THE GUNS OF NAVARONE, BREAKHEART PASS or WHERE EAGLES DARE.

'Puppet On A Chain,' is a sadistic adventure thriller, a toughened version of James Bond... In it, the Swedish actor Sven-Bertil Taube plays an American Interpol agent hunting down drug smugglers in Amsterdam... Comes the inevitable chase sequence... Only this time it takes place with speedboats through the maze of the Amsterdam canals, in which two boats race along the canals, make unbelievably sharp turns and even jump out of the water... For boating enthusiasts: The yellow boat driven by Taube was a Shakespeare Sportsman ski boat, thirteen and a half feet long, built in fiber glass and driven by a fifty horsepower Mercury motor... The blue boat handled by villain Vladek Sheybal was a Euro-craft, also with Mercury engine...