“Allow me to introduce myself. My name is August Christopher. I was named for St. Augustan, who coined my favorite phrase, ‘Give me chastity and give me constancy, but do not give it yet.'”
See if you can follow me here. The Saint started as a serious of novels by Leslie Charteris in 1926. He was a debonair “spy” who dressed with sophistication and really liked the ladies. He liked the finer things in life, and that often included a nice new weapon or gadget from time to time. I think you’re with me so far. He reminds you of Ian Fleming’s James Bond. And it’s true that Fleming based his super spy on two people. One of them was himself. Yes, Ian Fleming worked on Her Majesty’s Secret Service. He was inspired by The Saint, Simon Templar, for many of his personality attributes. The character drifted for decades. There were several Hollywood versions from the 1930’s to the 1950’s. Like Bond, he was played by several actors, including the immortal Vincent Price. But it wasn’t until 1961 that James Bond took his first steps on the path of becoming the most successful movie franchise in the history of the industry. Sean Connery brought the larger-than-life spy to life on the silver screen, and it caused an avalanche of movies, books, and particularly television shows with the likes of The Man From U.N.C.L.E., The Avengers, and Secret Agent Man being the most popular. No surprise they were as British as the icon that spawned them. There were even spy comedy shows, with the most memorable being Don Adams as Maxwell Smart, Agent 86 in Get Smart. These Bond influences also extended to a television series of The Saint. Still with me? Roger Moore would star as Simon Templar, the titular “Saint” Of course, Moore would become the replacement for Connery in the Bond franchise. In the years since there were earlier efforts to get The Saint on television, and in the years following there were attempts to revive the show. One such effort was spearheaded by Roger Moore, who had Pierce Brosnan up to replace his “saintly” character, and while that film never got off the ground, it would follow with another Saint star taking on the role of James Bond. Moore was impressed with Brosnan because of his role on Remington Steele, which also brought him to the attention of the Bond folks, but he might have been better placed as Templar, who like Remington Steele wasn’t really a spy, but one who put on the title of one for the sake of getting cases. The two franchise tentpoles have been circling each other ever since. Finally in 1997 director Phillip Noyce would choose Val Kilmer as the movie version of The Saint, and now you get a chance to puzzle all of this out for yourself with the Alliance Entertainment limited edition steelbook release of The Saint on UHD Blu-ray in full 4K. As we wait to see what Amazon will do with their first Bond film, let’s take a couple of hours and see if we can bring this crazy story full circle. I’m game. How about you?
“My name is Buro Houtenfaust. I was named for a Saint who was a very wealthy man. He had the wine, the women, the songs, the whole bit, and then inexplicably, took a vow of poverty and became a hermit. Ran off to live in the forest, in the nude.”
The film starts as an origin story of sorts. Young John Rossi is in a Catholic orphanage, where he would rather read the exciting stories of the Knights Templar instead of his own studies. It makes him somewhat of an outcast with his teachers. His attempt to break out with some of his fellow “inmates” leads to disaster when a goodbye kiss to his friend Agnes leads to her falling to her death from a balcony. Jump several years to Simon Templar as an adult thief and con artist who uses the names of Catholic saints for his various fake identities. He’s a bit of a Lon Chaney when it comes to disguises, so between his arsenal of saint identities and his flair for disguise, he does pretty well over all. One of his successful steals is a Russian microchip from a Russian oligarch named Tretiak (Serbedzija) and almost gets caught by his drug-addicted son Ilya (Nikolaev), a character likely an homage to David MacCallum’s character in The Man From U.N.C.L.E. He just gets away, but Tretiak has a plan. He tracks him down by pretending to be a client and hires him to steal the secrets of cold fusion from an American scientist who claims to have the answer. He romances Dr. Emma Russell (Shue) to steal the secret but makes the mistake of actually falling in love with her. When Tretiak springs his trap, the two find themselves on the run in Russia while they try to not only escape but bring down Tretiak, who is using Russia’s energy shortage to overthrow the current government of Russia. He longs for the great “empire” days of the Soviet Union.
“My name is Thomas Moore. I was named after a saint who died for his faith.”
The film did some globetrotting to bring us a great bit of authenticity. It was filmed on location in Russia as well as the UK and United States. While the settings aren’t quite the glamorous trappings you find in Bond films, they add an element of atmosphere that keeps the audience engaged. The film is overlong at two hours and could lose about 20 minutes or more. Kilmer and Shue just don’t have the chemistry or the pop that can hold our attention for as long as we’re required to stay engaged. The romance feels awkward, and I’m not sure if that has to do with the actors or the somewhat artificial way it’s all portrayed, which flies in the face of the opposite attention to pacing and realism of the outside world. It could be Shue. She had the same issue with Michael J. Fox in the Back To The Future sequels. I chalked it up then to the fact she was replacing Claudia Wells, who played his girlfriend Jennifer in the first film. For one film she spends almost the entire film asleep on a front porch, so I figured she just never was given the chance there, but now I’m not so sure. She just doesn’t have the look or action of a girl-Friday. Val Kilmer gave up a chance to reprise his Batman role to do this film, and I think it was a mistake. Don’t get me wrong. He’s the factor that keeps this film together. He’s great with his various characters, particularly the voices here. But he might have saved us from an even worse film where we got George Clooney as Batman. I’d gladly swap a better Batman than have this very average film.
There are no extras, and the image and audio presentations are a notch above the Blu-ray release, but you’re not going to show off your system with anything here. It’s an average release with no real restoration or bump added to the release.
Of course, the film didn’t give us a new run of The Saint in either film or television. Kilmer went on to other stuff and delivered some iconic film characters ending with him returning for a cameo just before he passed away on the Top Gun: Maverick movie. Kilmer will be missed. He had a reputation for being a bit of trouble on the set, but I think he never quite got the role suited for him. He came close a couple of times, but The Saint wasn’t even close. Still, if you’re a fan of the novels or the television show, you’ll rather enjoy this limited edition release. It might just give the franchise another breath of fresh air. You see, “You have to be a very good, and usually very dead person to become a saint. And more importantly, you need to work three miracles.”
