A Frederick Forsyth Cold War-style thriller that harks back to the Sixties in its flavour and restores Michael Caine to the Harry Palmer type of role he does so well. A Soviet agent (Pierce Brosnan) is assigned to build and explode an atomic bomb at a US base in Britain, to get the Americans out and weaken NATO. Sounds feasible, doesn't it? Never mind, you won't worry too much about the plot, since everybody is either double-crossing or eliminating everybody else, which makes it hard to latch on to a sympathetic character to take you through the narrative. Although well-made and scripted by Forsyth himself, the preposterous piece is all a bit long-winded and tension never really builds, partly for the same reason as in Forsyth's The Day of the Jackal, in that the outcome is never really in doubt. Still, Brosnan is excellent as the spy, with just a clever touch of foreign accent to his perfect English. For a late Eighties thriller, this had a dated air then, and now looks a period piece.

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