Frank Sinatra's previous two films had flopped and he was sufficiently impressed with 'The Ipcress File' to work with Sidney J. Furie in this adaptation of Frances Clifford's novel.
The best thing about this film is the music by Harry Sukman, a name I have never seen before. It is romantic and moody and very remindful of "Dangerous Moonlight" and the Warsaw Concerto, like being almost an effort to reach the same kind of Rachmaninov passion, but there is no passion in this film, Frank Sinatra's wife is long since dead, and his son's adventure in Leipzig leads to some passion on Sinatra's part but rather of murder and fury than anything else.
I caught this twice when I was a mere lad, remembering the physically beautiful Derren Nesbitt if nothing else ("Neizer voz I, Mr. Laker").
Who doesn' t miss the Cold War as a dramatic device? No matter how convoluted the story, I find myself relaxing into the general atmosphere of spy games with the old Soviet satellites.
Frank Sinatra plays an American industrialist and widower now based in London who is contacted by an old war buddy who needs his friend to deliver a message to a woman they were both acquainted with, now working in East Germany. After passing a microfilm to her hidden in his watchband, Sinatra is caught and then blackmailed into committing murder.
Frank Sinatra seemed to be in a thriller mood during the mid-to-late 1960s: in fact, he did five such genre efforts in quick succession – beginning with the caper ASSAULT ON A QUEEN (1966; which I’ve lost more times on Italian TV than I care to remember!) and concluding with LADY IN CEMENT (1968; with which I’ll be ending my Sinatra marathon in tribute to the 10th anniversary of his passing).
THERE BE SPOILERS, SO READERS BEWARE...Now this movie has the rare distinction of being realistic and preposterous at the same time.
I remember seeing The Naked Runner in theater when it came out and it holds a unique place in the annals of Frank Sinatra's career. Frank had been in some bad films before and would be again.
I don't mind slow spy films, even confusing ones. But the problem with this one is that there's no twist at the end.
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