Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.

It is not deep, but it is fun to watch. It does have a bit more of an edge to it than other similar films.

Unshakable, witty and deeply felt, the film will be paying emotional dividends for a long, long time.

The acting is good, and the firecracker script has some excellent ideas.

By far the best of the Harry Palmer films.Looked at now there is an almost prescient quality to it. Given that one of the main characters is a crazy Texan Billionaire intent on fermenting war to further his crazy right wing ideas.Have the Bush family ever seen this movie?The film is witty and smart and Michael Caine is excellent as usual and the supporting cast are all good too. Particularly the Red army General who seems relatively wise and sane compared to his American counterparts.Harry Palmer is the antidote to Bond.

I was watching this movie on evening as nothing was on and was very amused. The movie had a certain grittiness and at the same time was fun and quirky and that is the appeal of this movie. The locations in Finland were terrific. The story had a lot of twists and turns and a lot of double and triple crosses which made the movie fun. Everyone in the movie looked like they enjoyed making the movie and it shows on screen. The movie started with the Micheal Caine character being a private detective who gets a strange computer generated call and the movie ignited from there. Though one thing i noticed in the 60's that it was not east vs west somehow a lot of the spy movies had a sinister third party manipulating behind the scenes and this can be also seen with spectre in the bond series too but that is part of the charm of these type of movies. The leading lady is also the sister of the iconic Catherine Denueve and she is as fetching as her sister too bad of her demise in real life..Though a nice popcorn movie and i would watch it again.

Billion Dollar Brain was produced by Harry Saltzman, who produced the James Bond films of the 60s, and there are a lot of similarities between this film and those. The production is top-notch, the opening and closing credits have the same graphic quality, the music is similar, composed by the same John Barry? The lead of Harry Palmer is played by the fan favorite Michael Caine, with a sidekick/villain played by Karl Malden. There are the requisite intelligence superiors, the English played well by Guy Dolman, and the Russian side played by the very entertaining Oskar Homolka, who works the good-natured half-drunk Russian bear to the hilt.The movie wanders around quite a bit until a plot emerges about the typical psychopathic leader bent on some insanely ambitious scheme. What's different about this interpretation is that the villain is a Texas billionaire with the world's biggest computer who is bent on attacking communism by liberating Latvia in a surprise attack.We're not really let on to this actual motive until well into the second half, so the movie lacks a certain seriousness before that point. It's all sort of a pretty trip to Finland for Michael Caine to work with an old spy friend, and his pretty double-agent girlfriend.Michael Caine keeps the movie alive by being eminently watchable, and reacting subtly to whomever he shares scenes with. I'm half-latvian, and any movie that mentions this small nation is always a treat, but those scenes are so stereotypical of the bumbling communist eastern European living in barns that it's hard to take seriously. Creating an uprising in Latvia to destabilize the USSR is so ludicrous on its face as a plot, that it lacks the true peril of the classic Bond Villains' plans.The UK directors/producer obviously have it in for the Americans in this film, as the Texas villain is portrayed as a deeply insane aggressor.The plot seems fairly pointless, especially years after the end of the cold war, but the film retains a feel for the era, and is watchable for that as well. The production is beautiful, and reminds one of how cinema worked before CGI, when all shots had to be prepped, executed and edited well. It's also a great winter film, leaving any filmographer wondering how they got through some of the shots.What the film lacks the most is finding a credible balance between it's lighter side and a serious, bleak story about cold war standoffs. It says things, but then doesn't really back them up. The computer gets a huge amount of screen time, but ends up essentially irrelevant to the story. The sets look the same as in Collosus: The Forbin Project which said much more about the influence of computers on humans. The film is kind of a weak amalgam of Dr Strangelove, Bond, and Colossus, except the computer is not in control.The final invasion sequence has some cool elements, including a German winter half-track that shows up in Where Eagles Dare, good costumes and an exciting unusual demise, but the believability of the invasion itself really suffers, after the film was somewhat geographically credible up until that point.The actors are good, the production watchable and entertaining, but the plot politics are totally dated, the film doesn't know whether its a thriller or a farce and I would not purchase this movie or even watch it again.

Harry Palmer has left the British Secret Service and become a private detective.He has to deliver a thermos flask to an old friend in Helsinki.Soon he finds that he has entered the world of a Texas billionaire who thinks he can bring about a popular uprising in the Soviet Union with a help of a sophisticated computer.Billion Dollar Brain (1967) is directed by Ken Russell.It's based on Len Deighton's novel.This is the third of the Harry Palmer movies.Michael Caine was born to play this part.Karl Malden is terrific as Leo Newbigen.Francoise Dorleac does good job as Anya.It's pretty enjoyable to watch the over the top performance of Ed Begley.Guy Doleman plays the part of Colonel Ross and Oskar Homolka is Colonel Stok.In a small part we see Donald Sutherland playing a Scientist at computer.Also Åke Lindman and Pirkko Mannola are seen in the movie.Åke gets to use the machine gun.The movie is interesting for me mostly because it was mostly shot in Finland.It's pretty great to watch Finland as it was then.Also the the moments taking place in Riga were actually shot in Porvoo.There are some nice moments in this film.The first time we see Malden when he is in the sauna.Very Finnish.It get even better when Anya joins him there.The ice breaking under those vehicles is pretty amazing.For Finns this is almost a must-see.