 The Holcroft Covenant (1985) Directed by John Frankenheimer Michael Caine stars as Holcroft, a mild-mannered architect who gets a belated inheritance in the form of $4 billion in Nazi loot that his father and two other top Nazis, in a presumed fit of final-days guilt, left for him to administer as war reparations. The catch is, there's a bunch of bad guys who want the money to create a Fourth Reich to rule the world. After an interesting, well-directed, and genuinely suspenseful first half hour, The Holcroft Covenant turns the corner into "Assoline Alley" when Holcroft meets Helden (Victoria Tenant, Steve Martin's love interest in LA Story), whose father was also part of the covenant, and whose brother, we later learn, is being groomed as the neo-Führer. From there, what was a tense little potboiler becomes a preposterous, globe-trotting, confusingly intentional comedy. Caine gives it the old college try, managing as best he can the bizarre shifts in tone from slapstick to maudlin, often within the same scene. It doesn't help that Holcroft is a total moron, devoid of the slightest shred of common sense. After two or three scenes in which he happily jumps into unmarked cars with strangers who claim to be on his side, despite knowing that several people have already been killed trying to get at the fortune, all sympathy is lost. This fucker deserves everything he gets. Unfortunately, what he gets, and we get by proxy, is a tepid, nauseating romance with Tenant, who is a remarkably bad actress, making every scene she's in not just boring, but physically painful to watch. Her efforts at being sexy might be laughable if they weren't so pathetic. One almost gets the sense that either her performance or the fact of her being cast is a colossal inside joke, or perhaps the completion of an ill-planned studio contract, or the playing out of an ancient blood feud. Because the only thing the audience gains from Tenant's presence is intense discomfort. Equally so with the absurd storyline. As the film regresses, we learn that The Holcroft Covenant was a setup from the get-go, that Holcroft's father planned all along to use his son as a patsy, and that apparently everyone on Earth knew about it except Holcroft himself. And it all strangely hinges on whether or not Holcroft will sign the covenant and render it legal tender, thereby setting in motion a convoluted plan to use the money to purchase the services of 1,000 terrorists, named on a list kept by Helden's brother, to create a panic of worldwide anarchy that can only be resolved with the strong arm of the Fourth Reich. After a quasi-comical chase through an East Berlin nudist/S&M orgy parade, we discover that Helden's having an incestuous affair with her brother (Filthy Nazis! What won't they do?!). Holcroft figures it out, and in a master stroke, stages an anticlimactic press conference during which the truth is revealed to the media, and both Helden's brother and the third heir to the covenant (a symphony conductor) are killed on camera. So somehow, The Holcroft Covenant makes exponentially less sense at the end than it did at the beginning. In the final scene, Holcroft confronts Helden, who, it turns out, really did have feelings for Holcroft, and therefore must kill herself. If you're scratching your head, it ain't 'cause you ran out of T-Gel. And though I normally restrict myself to never giving away the end of a film, there's likely no way you'll ever see this movie. Which makes my reviewing it all the more pointless, but that's the Loud Bassoon for you. I'm suddenly struck with the futility of any further argument. Making a case against this film is like staging spelling bee against a mildly retarded 12 year-old; it's unnecessary and cruel, tempting though it may be. The Holcroft Covenant is clearly a victim of its times, the mid-1980s, an awkward and pubescent age in filmmaking. Yes, there are plenty of shitty movies nowadays, but at least you know the genre in which they suck. Or, if they cross genres, they do so in such a way that there's no misunderstanding (i.e. the comic sidekick carefully placed into the big budget action film). Nowadays, we, the audience, are nothing more than suckling calves to the massive, pumping teats of Hollywood, and the only thing asked for in return are our bodies, minds, souls, and bank accounts. But perhaps the machinery of Hollywood needed The Holcroft Covenant, like a failed cloning experiment—five arms, no mouth, and eight kidneys, held forever in cold storage, lessons learned—so that someday, a piece of dogshit such as Daredevil could be a massive success.
Review by Crimedog |
