Overall Rating
  Awesome: 6.98%
Worth A Look: 11.63%
Average: 13.95%
Pretty Bad: 41.86%
Total Crap: 25.58%
2 reviews, 31 user ratings
|
|
| Saint, The |
by Chris Parry
"Bubblegum euro-based action that fails to satisfy on any level."
|
There seems to be a trend in Hollywood. All female scientists MUST be gorgeous. Mira Sorvino in Mimic. Uma Thurman in Batman And Robin. And now Elisabeth Shue redoes the stereotype in The Saint.Fans of the original Roger Moore TV series won't get more of the same with this schlocky remake. In fact, precious few people will get much of anything other than a cheap thrill.
It's a popcorn movie. If you could unscrew the top of your head, take your brain out of your skull and rest it on the chair beside you, it wouldn't miss much.
Shue is the brain on buns who has discovered the secret of 'cold fusion' (ooooh), a new power source that could have every person in the world eating caviar in a week and a half.. or something.
Val Kilmer is The Saint. Master of disguise, action man, mack daddy, yada yada. He has to get the secret, oops, but Liz is a hottie, now he has to protect her secret from the clutches of evil...
Oh, it's all so boring.
I'll grant that Kilmer's disguises look better than Bruce Willis' in The Jackal - but if you shave your privates and tape the offcuts to the end of your nose, you've pretty much beaten Bruce already, so don't be going to see this movie just for the clever disguises. Some false teeth, some bad hair, yeah good, thanks for coming.
There's your standard action fare, a couple of chases, some cunning escapes, cliche romance, happy endings, snoooooooooore.
Then there's Shue. She's so completely wooden that she should join her brother on a Spelling soap opera. Sure, she's got a great rack, but that's all. There's clearly nothing going on upstairs and Shue was undoubtedly only cast for two reasons - 1) she's a fox - and 2) people know who she is.
I'd have paid more money to watch a fucking sock puppet recite her lines. The emotion level would have been the same but at least there may have been some humor. Performances like this could quite possibly be acheived much cheaper, and more effectively, using CGI characters and voiceovers.Overall, not a winner. Not smart, not funky, not the film that had to be made. I'd have much preffered to see an elderly Roger Moore bring his original character back, somewhat slower than he was in the day, but at least with the kind of style that Val Kilmer is incapable of.
link directly to this review at http://www.efilmcritic.com/review.php?movie=307&reviewer=1
originally posted: 08/31/98 22:05:53
![[printer]](/images/icon/printer.gif) printer-friendly format
|
TV to Screen: For more in the TV to Screen series, click here.
|
 |
USA
04-Apr-1997 (PG-13)
UK
N/A
Australia
N/A
|
|
Articles 
subscribe to this feed![[AllPosters.com]](/images/icon/ap.gif){kind=icon}
