Well Deserved Praise

Did you people see the same film I saw?

It is interesting even when nothing much happens, which is for most of its 3-hour running time. Read full review

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

So long as you are aware that you're about to watch a truly terrible terrible movie, you can sit back and enjoy the full extent of its absolute awfulness! Michael Caine doing some incredibly bad accents whilst karate chopping people to death with a single blow (he even manages to render a policeman unconscious by tripping him up!), Susan George being her usual am-dram hammy self, Robert Powell portraying the world's poshest policeman, and Lawrence Olivier either grumbling and gesticulating melodramatically or pausing abruptly because he's forgotten his next line. And who could blame him?! Everyone has been asked to utter dialogue so monumentally bad it has to be heard to be believed! After the highly amusing car chase climax, Caine suddenly turns philosopher and decides that "War is bad" - classic stuff! Everything about this film is bad, the script, the sets, the acting, the accents, the direction, the editing, the stunts, even the music's awful! But badness of this magnitude should be celebrated and enjoyed for what it is, and for this reason I have given this magnificent mess a 10 star rating! The only puzzle about this jigsaw is how it ever got to see the light of day!

It's very hard to know what to write about this.Take a seasoned director of taut spy thrillers (Terence Young, responsible for Dr No and From Russia With Love) and pair him with an experienced second-unit chief (Peter Hunt).Take three of the most talented actors of modern times (Laurence Olivier, Michael Caine and Charles Gray).Take a roman a clef about Kim Philby and a fictional return to Britain post-defection and make it in 1983 when spy thrillers were still relevant in a Cold War context.You'd think you'd have a pretty good film. Sadly, you don't.This film is terrible. A lumpen script and corny story is weighed down by an unsympathetic lead (is Michael Caine a goodie or a baddie?), wild overacting from Laurence Olivier (who was far too old to play a spy chief) and confusing plot points (Charles Gray's character has a wig...only Gray has a perfect head of hair and looks ridiculous with his bald cap on).Young clearly slept through the film instead of directing it and the script/plot is very hard to follow. I saw it last night for the second time and it's almost like both versions were cut but in different places...I'm pretty convinced that a third watching wouldn't help. For those who haven't seen it, don't even bother with the first watching. Truly truly awful.

I saw this movie with my girlfriend, now wife, in 1984. Being the only two people in the theater on the second day of the movie should have given us a clue but that fact only really made sense when we left the theater 45 minutes later, well before the end. Expecting a decent thriller, Michael Caine worthy, we couldn't grasp the fact that this movie made it into the cinema in the first place! Of course I was 20 year younger then and i have seen some very, very bad movies since but none of them made the impression "The Jigsaw Man" did! Since that day my wife and I qualify bad, boring movies as "Even The Jigsaw Man was better". This movie has played a major part in our movie-viewing life for the last 20 years as THE "Bad Movie Benchmark".

The direction is antiquated (long, boring conversations between two people in underlit offices, as the camera switches from a close-up of one person to a close-up of the other, and so on), and the script is confusing (though it clears up a bit on the second viewing). However, the film is saved EXCLUSIVELY by its cast, and especially by the star chemistry between Michael Caine and Laurence Olivier; the few scenes they share together are the best in the film. Caine pulls off a terrific Russian accent, too. (**)