The Saint (DVD)

...who had never heard of The Saint before this film was released? If you raised your hand, well, you're either too young to remember (or were born after the original series) or you were living in a parallel universe during the 60s/70s! The original series starred Roger Moore and then Ian Ogilvy as the charming Simon Templar a.k.a. The Saint…


~*~ CAST AND CREW ~*~

The Saint was released in 1997 and starred Val Kilmer, ...
...David Brown and Robert Evans, the story and screenplay are by Jonathan Hensleigh and it was directed by Phillip Noyce. The film is rated PG-13 and lasts for just under 2 hours.


~*~ PLOT TEASER ~*~

The film starts off in a catholic orphanage in the Far East where a priest is cruelly trying to make a young boy to say his name is John Rossi (a Saint) and the boy refuses to yield even after getting a good caning. ... more

Hands up those of you who had never heard of The Saint before this film was released? If you raised your hand, well, you're either too young to remember (or were born after the original series) or you were living in a parallel universe during the 60s/70s! The original series starred Roger Moore and then Ian Ogilvy as the charming Simon Templar a.k.a. The Saint…

~*~ CAST AND CREW ~*~

The Saint was released in 1997 and starred Val Kilmer, Elisabeth Shue, Rade Serbedzija, Valery Nikolaey and Henry Goodman. Produced by David Brown and Robert Evans, the story and screenplay are by Jonathan Hensleigh and it was directed by Phillip Noyce. The film is rated PG-13 and lasts for just under 2 hours.

~*~ PLOT TEASER ~*~

The film starts off in a catholic orphanage in the Far East where a priest is cruelly trying to make a young boy to say his name is John Rossi (a Saint) and the boy refuses to yield even after getting a good caning. The priest punishes all of the children by withholding food for the boys and locking the girls in their dormitory until the boy acknowledges his namesake. After the young boy files a switch blade to unlock the food cage the other boys tell him to call himself Simon Magus who was a magician but he decides to call himself Simon Templar. Simon decides to run away on a crusade but not before he says goodbye to his sweetheart Agnes who's locked in the girl's dorm. As they prepare to say goodbye the mean priest comes running with some ferocious dogs and Agnes falls to her death.

We're brought to the present day. Simon Templar (Kilmer) is in a room somewhere in Moscow and is listening to information about Ivan Tretiak (Serbedzija), an oil and gas industry magnate and ruthless politician. He steals a microchip for the sum of a million dollars and in the process he almost gets caught by Ilya Tretiak (Nikolaey), son of Ivan. The Tretiak's are not happy about this theft but they somehow manage to get in touch with him online and ask him to steal the formula for cold fusion which has been developed by a scientist, Dr Emma Russell (Shue). To add a romance angle to the story. The Saint falls for her and the rest of the film is about how the Tretiak's try to get the formula by any means and do away with The Saint and how The Saint foils (or doesn't foil as the case may be) their attempts.

~*~ MY VIEWS ~*~

Not being a particular fan of Val Kilmer, I think he did a better than average job of playing the part of the elusive, charming and somewhat confused about who he really is adventurer / thief / conman Simon Templar. The character is supposed to be a genius haunted by his past and I feel he pulled this off fairly well. Whenever he takes on a fake identity he uses the name of a Catholic Saint, (which incidentally is how he was tracked down to Russia by Dr Russell after he steals her cold fusion formula). I think he did pretty well changing his accents (although I'm no expert at accents) - sounded fairly convincing to me. He also gave the role a somewhat humorous slant which made up for any other anomalies of the film. My only real complaint about Val Kilmer in this film was the fact that he took his shirt off a few times and oh my God - the excessive chest hair!

Elisabeth Shue is a very versatile actress and she plays the part of the somewhat geeky but beautiful scientist with aplomb. I have seen her in several films and have always found her to play quite charming roles.

I have to mention Valery Nikolaey who played the part of Ilya partly because he seemed to really enjoy playing the part of son of a crazy Russian mafia tyrant with a penchant for drugs and partly because I thought he was pretty cute! How fickle am I?

The film itself is quite fast paced and you get a feeling of being swept along from start to finish even though the film is almost 2 hours long. I didn't find any of it boring - maybe I'm easily pleased. But I have to admit that I really enjoyed the film. I'm a bit of a gadget geek and really enjoyed seeing the different gadgets Val Kilmer used in the film - although I'm sure James Bond fans will have seen many more than I've seen - I'm just not a Bond fan.

~*~ THE ORIGINAL SERIES ~*~

I remember watching The Saint on TV when I was young. Roger Moore starred as The Saint back in the early to late 60s, originally in black and white for about 70 episodes and then in colour for about 40 episodes, all of which were based on stories written by Leslie Charteris. Watching the series, people could have been forgiven for assuming that the Simon Templar character was independently wealthy - but the money he had was the money he earned from his various schemes.

Ian Ogilvy took over as Simon Templar for 24 episodes in Return of The Saint in the late 70s but as far as I'm aware he was never as popular to the majority of fans as his predecessor the suave Mr Moore. Although personally I remember Ian Ogilvy more as The Saint as I was born in 1967 and mostly recall seeing Ogilvy play the charming and debonair character.

The Saint was recreated in the late 80s by another couple of actors but never were as popular as the previous series and limited episodes were made.

~*~ DVD EXTRAS ~*~

The DVD has subtitles in various languages available and even English for the hearing impaired. There's the expected scene selection feature. Audio is available in Czech, German and English - obviously I used English - although strangely enough when I went back to watch parts of the film after clicking through the audio options, the film was in French! There's a theatrical trailer that lasts for 2 minutes showing the trailer used to advertise the film which obviously shows some of the best scenes from the film to entice viewers to watch the whole film.

You can also watch the film with commentary by Philip Noyce talking about how he read The Saint books years ago growing up in Australia and how Simon Templar was his ideal hero - like Robin Hood, taking money from overly rich and "bad" people but keeping a fee for his services. This was quite enjoyable as Noyce describes how he wanted the audience to know how Simon Templar came about becoming The Saint, which is why he created the scenes at the start of the film showing how Templar was in an orphanage and the reasoning behind his using Saint names for his aliases. Noyce also talks about how he met Val Kilmer and how the character was developed in the screenplay taking Templar's disguises one step further than in the original series.

The cheapest available DVD I could spot on the net was from prismdirect.co.uk for £4.99 but I'm sure you could also pick up a used copy from ebay even cheaper. To tell you the truth I got my copy free with a pizza a while ago and have only just got around to watching it!

~*~ CONCLUSION ~*~

Overall I'd say this is quite an enjoyable film if you don't take it too seriously and if you don't try to compare it too much to the original TV series. I'd rate it 7½ out of 10 and have no problem with watching it again.

I'd recommend it especially to those who remember watching the TV series - you should watch this just for nostalgic value.

Thanks for reading.
 

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