The Vatican gets yet another cinematic rap across the knuckles for its perceived anti-semitic stance of silence during World War Two.

This time right-wing factions within the Catholic Church in the South of France are accused of sheltering as well as bankrolling a 70-year-old collaborator.

Pierre Brossard's crime was complicity in the murder of seven Jews while a young officer in the Vichy Milice during 1944 in Nazi-occupied France.

For almost fifty years he's been on the run, seeking sanctuary with fellow collaborators and sympathetic priests within the Catholic church.

However, his luck seems to be running out when ambitious, half-Jewish Judge Livi (Swinton) launches a new investigation aided by scrupulous army Colonel Roux (Northam).

To complicate matters a mysterious group of assassins - widely suspected to be a Jewish Movement - are also on his trail and determined to reach him before Livi and Roux.

This has all the makings of a vibrant and politically relevant thriller, particularly as it was adapted from Brian Moore's spare and deftly plotted novel.

However, director Jewison releases any hint of tension by laboriously signposting every step and employing dialogue that sounds like it was lifted from a radio play.

Caine, who bears a worrying resemblance to Harry Enfield's "You Don't Want To Do That" pedantic pensioner, faces an uphill struggle lending his character the necessary evil.

In one woeful scene he turns up at the Marseille home of his wife, an impencunious chambermaid played, unbelievably, by Rampling and threatens to kill her dog.

The pooch's safety guaranteed he dots around various hospitable abbeys on the Riviera with an absurdly uniformed Northam and scarcely credible Swinton on his trail.

Leaden, poorly-paced and scarcely believable, this is a criminal squandering of a perfectly good premise and a waste of talent, particularly Alan Bates in his last role.

Tim Evans