From the last gasp of the Cold War comes The Fourth Protocol (1987), a polished but unexceptional thriller. In the Soviet Union, a well placed Russian agent named Valeri Petrofsky (Pierce Brosnan) is given an assignment so top secret he has to kill the man who delivers his instructions. His mission: go to England, rent a flat near a U.S. Air Force base, and assemble an atomic bomb. Fortunately for the British, political in-fighting puts one their shrewdest agents, John Preston (Michael Caine), in position to sniff out what’s happening. He’s too insubordinate to win over his pompous superior, but fortunately his more intelligent colleague Sir Nigel Irvine (Ian Richardson) deploys him, off the books, to stop the threat. Can he counter Petrofsky’s plan? Well, yes, of course he can.
The Fourth Protocol starts promisingly, with effective visual story-telling, twisty spy-world politics, and a generally intriguing slow-build. It’s also got a good soundtrack from Lalo Schifrin, whose noticeably unnoticeable music always works well with this kind of material. Alas, the film wears out its welcome. Much of the early going is unrelated character set-up, and once the main plot takes center stage, nothing particularly unexpected happens and the action unfolds rather clinically. Caine is in fine form and Brosnan is okay, but otherwise the actors struggle with the stilted dialogue, especially the miscast Russians; Ray McAnally makes for an unconvincing KGB bigwig, and Ned Beatty isn’t much better. The trappings are well handled, and the final twist is classically cynical spy world stuff, but overall it’s a flat, distancing affair.
