The Next Man (1976)

I came across this movie very late one night recently and as it was a Connery movie with which I was not familiar I decided to stay with it. Big mistake. It appears to have ideas way above its station and the plot boils down to being about both Political and Corporate interests combining to ensure that Connery's character's peace plan for the Middle East fails. To ensure this a top female assassin (Sharpe) is hired to liquidate Connery. However, such is the clunky nature of the plot, in one scene she actually saves his life when she has ample opportunity to kill him. Given that this is a mid 70s "serious political movie" a downbeat ending is compulsory and this is ensured when Sharpe kills Connery at the movie's climax.I'm guessing any feminists watching this movie appreciated the irony of James Bond being murdered by a beautiful woman.

The remarkable thing about this movie is that it was fully conceived, filmed, and released *before* Anwar Sadat and the Camp David Accords, and, in its own way, echoes the events in its own future. If you are too young to remember these events, then I recommend you look it up in Wikipedia... Then realize that this movie did not follow that history, it preceded it.Not much should be expected of the movie, it is a definite B-movie from Connery's lower-rent period, when he did a lot of doubtful pictures following his "Never Again" appearance in "Diamonds Are Forever", and before his talent, so evident in his early, pre-Bond pictures, was re-recognized by critics and fans alike.It is a decent and effective, if not surprising picture, and Connery himself does an effective job as an Arab leader seeking to end the strife with Israel, against substantial political opposition. At the time, the whole idea of it seemed preposterously far in the future, but in reality, the Camp David Accords were less than 4 years away.

I watched a DVD version of this movie, called The Arab Conspiracy, a pretty choppy affair in several aspects. Yet, I felt well entertained. Cornelia Sharpe stands out as the most efficient and deadly contract killer I have ever seen, a kind of a Mutant Mata Hari. And she looks it too, like someone you really do not want to mess with, if it can be avoided.From a historical and political viewpoint the story is not entirely without interest. It is basically about Arab politicians who try to break away from the stalemate in the Middle East which persists up to the present day – and get bumped off one by one. Sean Connery plays a Saudi aristocrat who as the envoy of his country has the audacity to propose an integration of Isreal and that country's economical and scientific know-how into the region – signing herewith his death penalty.I find it notable that this movie was released three years before the Camp David agreements, five years before Egyptian president Anwar as-Sadat's assassination. One could even say it was prophetic. It must also be noted, and I give the movie credit for this, that the motives of all protagonists (not least the deadly female) are left pretty much in the dark. The victims of the mentioned murders seem to be anything but selfless idealists. Connery's character appears to be primarily a gambler and a pleasure-seeker. It is insinuated that underneath all what happens and can be seen there lies a highly complex structure of power relations and interdependencies, like a fungus, that cannot be overlooked in its whole by any of the protagonists. Maybe that is the curse of the Middle East.

I found "The Arab Conspiracy" in a bargain bin and thought I'd uncovered a lost treasure. Folks, there's a reason why you don't hear much about this film. The plot is muddy, the pacing is slow, Cornelia Sharpe is about as vivacious as plain, cold tofu, and the ending leaves you flat. Not even Sean Connery can save this one.