A Major Disappointment

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

There's a more than satisfactory amount of boom-boom in the movie's trim running time.

It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

Val Kilmer plays a mysterious thief who has great skills including as a master of disguise. Ivan Tretiak hires him to steal the formula for cold fusion from American scientist Emma Russel (Elisabeth Shue).This is sort of like a Bond movie if James Bond put on ugly disguises in silly voices and steals for himself. The disguises look too silly. It diminishes the attempt to be cool and relevant. Instead of silly disguises, it should really concentrate on the spy tradecrafts. Val Kilmer does an internal dialog which could be better used to highlight his skills. The other problem is that there are too much Russian in this. I don't understand why Russia would have a heating oil crisis. It tries to be exotic, but ends up as unsatisfying.There is also the minor problem of Elisabeth Shue. She's supposed to be this weird loner scientist, and she doesn't have that persona. And she plays it as a love sick puppy to one of Val Kilmer's fake character. She is the all American girl next door, and they need a quirky scientist type. And the point is to get somebody else to replicate her results which means she's supposed to write out the experiment for them to try. It's a stupid idea that she would write out the formula and stuff it in her bra. I want to like this for Elisabeth Shue, but this is too silly.

The Saint is a fun, well paced jaunt into the world of Simon Templar. Simon Templar can be looked at as a rogue mercenary who does dangerous and technically advanced jobs that only a handful of people in the world can pull off. It features solid acting from its three main characters (Val Kilmer in the title role, with Elisabeth Shue and Rade Šerbedžija) and is never boring to watch. You can almost look at it as a precursor to the Jason Bourne style movies. While you cannot directly compare the plots of the two movies, after watching both you can see how the Bourne series adopts some of the action, intensity and overall feel of a movie like The Saint. I won't give away any more details, but it is worth watching and easily rates above its average score of 6 as seen on this website. It is a solid 7.5.

I'm a massive fan of all things Saintly. I have read all the Saint books, I own and have seen all the old RKO Saint movies from the 30's, 40's and 50's with Louis Hayward, George Sanders and Hugh Sinclair and own all the TV episodes from the 60's & 70's with Roger Moore & Ian Ogilvy. Only a few Saint items elude me. The very hard to find Simon Dutton Saint adventures from the late 80's, the Andrew Clarke one off TV Movie from 1987, the old radio shows from he 40's and 50's and the forgettable French movies of the 60's.Because of this, I was very wary about the Val Kilmer movie featuring the halo'd character of Simon Templar despite having Saint legend Robert S. Baker as executive producer. My fears were not without foundation.The character of Simon Templar as originally written by creator Leslie Charteris is an English Gentleman adventurer thief, he is known by reputation as a criminal with morals. He despises injustice, never preys on the innocent and only steals from people he refers to as the ungodly who have made their ill gotten gains by riding rough shod over anyone and everything. In this movie we have an American Templar (1st mistake), who commits high tech robberies for extremely large sums on behalf of people who are morally bankrupt (2nd mistake). In fact Kilmer's portrayal of Simon Templar is as far removed from Charteris's creation and the character portrayed so well by Moore, Ogilvy and Sanders you cannot even recognise him as being the same person.Having said that it was SO easy to forget that this was even a Saint movie. As far as I'm concerned it was just a wonderful exciting movie about an American cyber criminal on the run from the Russian Mafia who falls in love with an American physicist. The action is gripping the plot engaging and the acting superb, apart from a few VERY sickly scenes between Kilmer and Shue. I'm all for romance between characters but......I did enjoy it but apart from the title it is in no way, shape or form, a Saint Movie. That was the producers 3rd and biggest mistake. By calling it a Saint movie, they were already on the back foot as expectations were no doubt going to be high especially from die hard Saint fans like myself. Making the Saint an American is a BIG no no. having the Saint happily work for criminals is another.If they had removed all reference to The Saint character from the story, I could be easily reviewing one of the best movies of the '90's. Kilmer's Character was more akin to Ethan Hunt than anything you would ever find in a Charteris book. However, Elizabeth Shue is GORGEOUS and I really did enjoy this movie very much for what it was. If you can forget it's a supposed to be a Saint movie then I'm sure you will too.Enjoy!!!

This movie was horrendous. The plot was pathetic and non-original and the acting was painful to watch. As a matter of fact, I did not realize this was even Val Kilmer, that is how horrible it was.After we finished watching this atrocity, I looked it up on IMDb because I wanted to know who the actress was; she was just so unbearable and unable to perform her lines in a believable manner, I was convinced she was some 'unknown' that they got for cheap to go along with this low budget, below B movie. I was shocked to find out it was Elizabeth Shue...who, in my opinion, still cannot act her way out of a cracker jack box This movie was horrible. Painfully, banefully horrible! It should be burned from all archives and never spoken of again.I'd have given it a -10 (negative) if it would have been allowable...wouldn't even let me rate it a 0. It doesn't even deserve a 1. It was just that pathetic. If you value your eyes, ears and stomach...don't watch this thing