Cool, grace, style, wit. James Bond got most of the action, but Derek Flint made a mark all his own, both as breakout role for star James Coburn and uniquely clever send-up of 007, who in 1966 was taking his first year off after knocking off four big hits in the four preceding years.
So it is a shame to see "Flint" stumble as much as it does once it so smoothly establishes our hero and his basic situation in the first 40 minutes.
The world is being held for ransom by scientists who want to establish a new order dedicated to peace and freedom - on their terms. Since their methods involve not only wholesale destruction but hiring homicidal British toffs and ex-Hitler Youth people, you don't question the world's unified response in sending against them the uniquely dangerous Mr. Flint, master of karate, fencing, and lighter with 82 different functions - 83 if you wish to light a cigar.
"Is there anything you don't know?" demands his perpetually unhappy ex-boss, Cramden (Lee J. Cobb, excellent as always).
"A great many things, sir," Flint replies, managing to sound both humble and smug about it.
"Our Man Flint" has fun with our hero, playing up his capabilities to an enjoyably absurd degree. He's so amazingly super that he not only lives with four beautiful, eminently satisfied women, but draws a grateful smile when he sends one off with instructions to prepare some deer meat for his return. One shudders to imagine how a Robert Wagner (then) or Shia LaBeouf (now) would assay such a role. Coburn enjoys himself in a natural and unaffected way that draws you in, playing up both his zen cool and his zest for life. You know he's laughing at us laughing at him, and it works because it's Coburn, so unearthly he could have played Mr. Spock if not for his kilowatt grin.
To me, the first 40 minutes of this movie is '60s nirvana. You get the build-up, the tension between Cramden and Flint (which is all one way as Flint seems only amused by his ex-boss's tantrums), and a couple of clever, ripping fight scenes. One ends with something you never see in movies of this kind - the hero stopping to save the life of a red-shirt nobody.
But once the film leaves a strip club in Marseilles (where Flint recognizes the bouillabaisse served from taste as the same exact recipe left on an attempted-murder clue), the movie settles into the business of resolving a steady-moving but dullish plot. The global extortion plot takes center stage, and a humdrum quality settles into the movie. The villains' plot is certainly unusual, but both the excitement and humor of the movie's first third diminish severely as Flint goes through some fairly standard spy paces.
Gila Golan is as sexy as any Bond girl in her red bikini, and Edward Mulhare squeezes all the sneering bravado he can from his underwritten chief-henchman role. Director Daniel Mann finds his moments with the help of Jerry Goldsmith's gamboling samba score, like when Flint climbs a ladder and faces down two assailants on a high-up catwalk in an uninterrupted shot. But too often he seems constricted by the level of what he had to film.
Early on, scenes sparkle as we visit Flint's richly-appointed bachelor pad and a New York restaurant. By the time Flint is in the villains' secret lair, Mann flails about with static tracking shots of pinwheel "hypnosis" machines strung with Christmas-tree lights. Also many babes in bikinis, nice for a while but suggesting a "bread-and-circuses" approach to the whole endeavor by about the 20-minute mark.
"Our Man Flint" wins points for not taking itself seriously. But it treats this too often as a license to loaf. The end result leaves you with a great set-up with a fair-to-middling follow-through, and a main character who should have been more iconic than he was.
SPOILER - Some people have criticized the ending of this film as a little too bloody-minded at the expense of some well-meaning if despotic idealists. I doubt the makers of the movie gave much thought to the matter in any way, but like gridoon2012's excellent review I was left wondering about the fate of the many brainwashed women who weren't lucky enough to be saved by Flint from their doomed island. It would leave more of a pall on a better film. Here you just skate past it, because the whole movie is like that, for better or worse. - SPOILER END
So it is a shame to see "Flint" stumble as much as it does once it so smoothly establishes our hero and his basic situation in the first 40 minutes.
The world is being held for ransom by scientists who want to establish a new order dedicated to peace and freedom - on their terms. Since their methods involve not only wholesale destruction but hiring homicidal British toffs and ex-Hitler Youth people, you don't question the world's unified response in sending against them the uniquely dangerous Mr. Flint, master of karate, fencing, and lighter with 82 different functions - 83 if you wish to light a cigar.
"Is there anything you don't know?" demands his perpetually unhappy ex-boss, Cramden (Lee J. Cobb, excellent as always).
"A great many things, sir," Flint replies, managing to sound both humble and smug about it.
"Our Man Flint" has fun with our hero, playing up his capabilities to an enjoyably absurd degree. He's so amazingly super that he not only lives with four beautiful, eminently satisfied women, but draws a grateful smile when he sends one off with instructions to prepare some deer meat for his return. One shudders to imagine how a Robert Wagner (then) or Shia LaBeouf (now) would assay such a role. Coburn enjoys himself in a natural and unaffected way that draws you in, playing up both his zen cool and his zest for life. You know he's laughing at us laughing at him, and it works because it's Coburn, so unearthly he could have played Mr. Spock if not for his kilowatt grin.
To me, the first 40 minutes of this movie is '60s nirvana. You get the build-up, the tension between Cramden and Flint (which is all one way as Flint seems only amused by his ex-boss's tantrums), and a couple of clever, ripping fight scenes. One ends with something you never see in movies of this kind - the hero stopping to save the life of a red-shirt nobody.
But once the film leaves a strip club in Marseilles (where Flint recognizes the bouillabaisse served from taste as the same exact recipe left on an attempted-murder clue), the movie settles into the business of resolving a steady-moving but dullish plot. The global extortion plot takes center stage, and a humdrum quality settles into the movie. The villains' plot is certainly unusual, but both the excitement and humor of the movie's first third diminish severely as Flint goes through some fairly standard spy paces.
Gila Golan is as sexy as any Bond girl in her red bikini, and Edward Mulhare squeezes all the sneering bravado he can from his underwritten chief-henchman role. Director Daniel Mann finds his moments with the help of Jerry Goldsmith's gamboling samba score, like when Flint climbs a ladder and faces down two assailants on a high-up catwalk in an uninterrupted shot. But too often he seems constricted by the level of what he had to film.
Early on, scenes sparkle as we visit Flint's richly-appointed bachelor pad and a New York restaurant. By the time Flint is in the villains' secret lair, Mann flails about with static tracking shots of pinwheel "hypnosis" machines strung with Christmas-tree lights. Also many babes in bikinis, nice for a while but suggesting a "bread-and-circuses" approach to the whole endeavor by about the 20-minute mark.
"Our Man Flint" wins points for not taking itself seriously. But it treats this too often as a license to loaf. The end result leaves you with a great set-up with a fair-to-middling follow-through, and a main character who should have been more iconic than he was.
SPOILER - Some people have criticized the ending of this film as a little too bloody-minded at the expense of some well-meaning if despotic idealists. I doubt the makers of the movie gave much thought to the matter in any way, but like gridoon2012's excellent review I was left wondering about the fate of the many brainwashed women who weren't lucky enough to be saved by Flint from their doomed island. It would leave more of a pall on a better film. Here you just skate past it, because the whole movie is like that, for better or worse. - SPOILER END