Purely Joyful Movie!

A bit overrated, but still an amazing film

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

The storyline feels a little thin and moth-eaten in parts but this sequel is plenty of fun.

If you don't expect too much from "Puppet on a Chain," you can spend an enjoyable session watching a nearly half-century-old bam- bam-wham- wham adventure movie set in beautiful Amsterdam.The story, cobbled from a book by Alaistair MacLean, once one of the most popular novelists working the global-thriller gold mine ("The Guns of Navarone," "The Satan Bug," "Ice Station Zebra,"), involves a narcotics gang working out of Holland, and the good guys bent on stopping them. If "Puppet on a Chain" has any claim to fame, it's because of its heart-pounding epochal speed-boat chase through Dutch canals. Beautifully set up, daringly acted by supremely skilled stuntmen and superbly photographed, it's one of the most exciting high-motion chase scenes in movie history.The rest of the movie involves a heavily layered story about dolls, Bibles, and ingenious ways of making the hero's life miserable and painful. Aside from the veteran American actor Alexander Knox ("Wilson") and a dependably hissable villain (Vladek Shaybel, a familiar Bond baddie, most notably the Czech chess grandmaster, "SPECTRE Number 5," in the 1963 "From Russia with Love") the acting is solidly second-rate and the undistinguished dialogue just a means of nudging the story forward. The hero, a US agent, is stolidly if unexpectedly portrayed by a Swedish actor, Sven-Bertil Taube (who was much better decades later in the Swedish film, "The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo," as Henrick Vanger). Don't look for Bond girls here – just an assemblage of wan actresses, all looking curiously like Addams Family cousins in their dark-haired pallor, mouthing dull repartee.Good points include the aforesaid speedboat chase, beautiful cinematography in good color, Piero Piccioni's appealing score, some funny headgear, and a sometimes original look at the seamy underbelly of The Netherlands, including prostitutes, graffiti and some wildly complicated drug smuggling operations. All this doesn't stop director Geoffrey Reeve and cinematographer Jack Hildyard from having some fun, notably in photographing a) a naughty and messy floor show, and later, b) a prudish and precise folk dance – the vigilant moviegoer might enjoy comparing the two."Puppet on a Chain," for all its obvious influence on Bond movies, has somehow always hidden under the radar, and never been given its just due as a progenitor of the international thriller genre, although moviegoers have time and again been pleasantly surprised at the unpredictable morsels hidden within its bland Dutch cheese offering.

Cinema's greatest boat chase is found in "Puppet on a Chain", a 1971 thriller directed by Geoffrey Reeve. The boat chase in question, however, was directed by Don Sharp. Kinetic, tightly edited and cleverly organised, it was stylistically a good 30 years ahead of action movie trends. Its dramatic juxtaposition of noise and silence, and its John Frankenheimer inspired filming of breakneck motion, would also prove an influence on a young George Lucas.Unfortunately the aforementioned "boat scene" occurs after about an hour and a half of tedious "cops and robbers" storytelling, all of which can be safely skipped by film aficionados. The film was written by novelist Alistair Maclean". Standard 1970s crime movie fare, it trivialises and distorts the complex class, geopolitical, economic and even philosophical issues surrounding both policing and the drug trade.6/10 - Worth one viewing.

I've grown up reading Alistair McLean's books and I have watched a couple of movies based on his books. There are some pretty good ones made. But this one is probably the best. Mainly because the characters are pretty interesting and the story line is one of the most original ones you will come across (considering the fact that this is as old as 1972!). Movies on drugs/drug trafficking etc. have been inspired from this slick pic! The hero (Sven Bertil-Taube) is cool as a cucumber (just the way McLean sketched it) .. and he suits his role to the hilt. The plot is usual McLean and the concept is WOW! No review of this film is complete without a mention of the Speed Boat chase in the canals of Amsterdam. My Gawd' ! The "French Connection" road chase, the "Ronin" road chase, the "Tomorrow Never Dies" speed boat chase around the Millennium Dome are all inspired by this superbly crafted sequence which is interspersed with aerial shots, close-ups, action shots and more. Even without a background score, this sequence is great! This movie is a MUST WATCH! :-)Enjoy!

'Puppet On A Chain,' is a sadistic adventure thriller, a toughened version of James Bond... In it, the Swedish actor Sven-Bertil Taube plays an American Interpol agent hunting down drug smugglers in Amsterdam... Comes the inevitable chase sequence... Only this time it takes place with speedboats through the maze of the Amsterdam canals, in which two boats race along the canals, make unbelievably sharp turns and even jump out of the water... For boating enthusiasts: The yellow boat driven by Taube was a Shakespeare Sportsman ski boat, thirteen and a half feet long, built in fiber glass and driven by a fifty horsepower Mercury motor... The blue boat handled by villain Vladek Sheybal was a Euro-craft, also with Mercury engine...