I think the movie has much to recommend it re plot, locations, style etc. What ruins it for me as a Saint fan since my childhood (I mean the books) are (1) Kilmer who nothing like the Saint in either looks, height, personality or style, let alone the completely American accent and American style of delivery of his lines - notably the humour which he doesn't in any way deliver as an English person would so it sounds completely wrong. (2) Kilmer's character isn't remotely connected with the real Saint but a figment of the imagination of someone or some people determined to produce an American James Bond and totally misrepresenting our very English and very different Saint.
The Saint is 6ft2in if I recall - if Kilmer's that tall, I must admit he doesn't look it, dark haired (what's with the yellow-haired child Saint and light-brown for Kilmer?), very handsome, elegant and charming but also very boyish even in his later years. Of course handsome is as we individually like but to me Kilmer is the same kind of casting failure as the latest James Bond - Kilmer and Craig both aren't, to me, remotely handsome, they have wrong shaped face, all kinds of things are wrong when compared with the characters they are meant to be playing so I really only liked Kilmer in this movie when he wasn't being the Saint but when he was pretending to be someone else and that he did do quite well.
The Saint is also sophisticated and stylish and self-assured and very English, probably a lesser public school education (that isn't posh upper class or do you think our PM Tony Blair is posh upper class - he had the same kind of education). These days the Saint would probably have gone to an ordinary comprehensive, but the stories started in the late 1920's.
But it makes nonsense of the idea the Saint was an orphan child dragged up in some brutal far East institution although he certainly could have lived and been educated out there in some school or other for ex-Pats. The Saint also had associates of similar background. OK, we can assume this movie is depicting an older Saint but even in the last of the books he is still English in style, elegant and all the rest of it.
The Saint doesn't go around doing Bond-like operations. The first operation in the movie is entertaining but it isn't The Saint.
Tag lines are given on this site for the movie:
"Cunning. Devious. Dangerous. Treacherous." Cunning, certainly. Devious of course but not nasty with it. Dangerous definitely. But never treacherous. He does fairly by those who do fairly by him. You can include the police in that as he continually evades them but helps them in his own way. He has a strong sense of justice which is partly the raison d'etre for his lifestyle. The other motive is of course making a living so - unlike the far too well-behaved Saint depicted by Roger Moore, the real Saint steals - from the ungodly, and punishes them before he might hand them over to the police. For me this doesn't come over in the movie - the Kilmer Saint is too "action movie" ordinary. The Saint isn't ordinary.
"Never reveal your name. Never turn your back. Never surrender your heart." the tags contine. OK for a spy. Nonsense for the Saint who is flamboyant and never hides his name unless working under cover. He does sometimes turn his back and get into difficult situations which Charteris obviously enjoyed getting him out of. He does surrender his heart - rather frequently though rather lightly - he doesn't get tied down. Apart from the long-term girl-friend Patricia Holm who eventually disappeared awhile after the Saint relocated to the US, perhaps fed up with his continual womanising and frequent disappearances on adventures. He was passionate about her in the early stories in spite of his wanderings and many other women. He treated women with respect and affection even if they tried to trick him, unless they were seriously bad, and remembered some of them with tenderness (see the books!) He's well known to many police forces and much of the fun is how he outwits them - whilst often helping them as well. No secret names! Usually picked up on the moment he enters any country with police watching him around the clock to see what he might do.....
"Who is The Saint? A man without a name, can never be identified. A man who doesn't exist, can never be caught. A man who doesn't love, can never truly be alive."
Fine for some other action hero. Even Bond doesn't hide his identity often. Kilmer's character is continually in disguise. The Saint used disguise occasionally and other names occasionally, usually with the same initials.
He is not an American even though moved there at the commencement of WW2 - abandoning his country to the Nazi threat instead of going into the secret service here, which was rather a shock I imagine to readers at the time, and his casual work for the CIA on and off vs any Nazi types who caused any trouble in the US hardly compares with being in Europe under cover and defending Britain...... When my reading of the stories reached this stage of his history, my respect for the Saint faded considerably - a swashbuckling hero should have been defending his country, not hiding out thousands of miles away.... But of course the writer had moved to the US years before so I suppose he saw this as an opportunity to have his hero in his adopted country for good?
Currently, 2007, Americans act English characters with an English accent, and many of them do a very acceptable English accent. OK to cast the Saint with an American actor, but for heaven's sake get the correct English accent and English style. If the movie had been made now, 2007, perhaps it would have been far better.
So for me this story anyway is nothing to do with the Saint. As a story divorced from the Saint, it's not a bad movie and Kilmer does a reasonable job as "some action hero who is not the Saint" but than Kilmer grates on me whenever he pretends to be the Saint. Did he ever watch the Roger Moore episodes? Or read the books?
Comparing Kilmer with Roger Moore. I don't see Roger Moore as the perfect interpretation of the Saint who is more light-hearted and reckless and swashbuckling than Moore's dignified and elegant interpretation and Moore's Saint is too law-abiding and never seems to steal anything. But Moore, whose acting is persistently underrated because he is so self-deprecating and makes it look so easy, delivers an excellent Saint from the point of view of an older and calmer man (which the Saint himself never became, he was always boyish) with great charm, style, and of course Moore's accomplished delivery of English style humour is matchless. He also has the delightful mid-Atlantic accent that allows The Saint to avoid the cliches of "upper class English dinosaur" jokes.
What ruined this movie for all time is that it pretends to relate to the Saint. The Saint is a much loved, famous and long-time swashbuckler. Taking the idea of this character and turning it into someone else - fine if that's what the movie makers wanted to do. But to name him The Saint, Simon Templar, is simply unacceptable. That's why I give this movie 0 out of 4. I wanted to see this great hero and what I got was some totally different guy. So of course I was furious and bitterly disappointed. Worse, this movie destroyed all chance of sequel movies as so many other people agreed with me that it wasn't the Saint and wasn't good enough for the Saint. How could we trust those film makers/scriptwriters to do another Saint movie? But perhaps someday we will get a good Saint movie. There hasn't ever been one yet that's been right.
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molecularentropy
17 years ago
Gee. Have you bothered actually WATCHING the movie, instead of just picking at everything?
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treeskier802
17 years ago
Rosian is your typical Englishman with no imagination. He enjoyed the old TV series and cannot open his mind. I love the old James Bond films, but at least see that the new ones with Craig are taking on a positive, realistic path. A good actor ala Daniel Craig or Val Kilmer can make you forget about menial issues such as exact physical appearances that are presented in a book. Furthermore, your imagination is so limited that you fail to stretch it for an actor who can simply do a good job. I love Roger Moore, but his portrayals of Simon Templar and James Bond are mediocre at best. He is a comedien in the Bond movies and is far from a theif in The Saint TV series. In fact, it is difficult to determine what he is supposed to be in The Saint...a detective? A plain old do-gooder in the right place at the right time all the time? What???
Kilmer and Noyce adapted Templar into a modern character. My bet is that Leslie Charteris would have really enjoyed this film. Plus, this movie is about how Templar becomes The Saint, which he acheives at the end of the film (note the music, the halo, the Saint pin). It would have been a perfect lead into more films. Too bad the film was not marketed correctly (as Rosian basically pointed out with the tag lines he recited).
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17 years ago
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treeskier802
17 years ago
You are funny Sebastion...telling me to behave like you are going to spank me or something. Hilarious. You English are hilarious. You try to act all proper and pompous...oh, you take yourselves so SERIOUSLY. Thanks for the chuckle. Your response pretty much rests my case. No imagination, unless of course you had a British actor in the role, then it would have been fine.
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rosian
16 years ago
You think we English take ourselves seriously? Shows you aren't English. You clearly have no imagination.
Now isn't it interesting that we think the Americans don't understand our humour at all and have very little imagination and are so, so, so "serious" and often so, so, so pompous with it.
Now that is "irony" which I am told by Americans who've lived in England the Americans don't understand. So I can well understand you have a cultural problem with the English. So try going to Australia or New Zealand or various other Anglicised countries. They understand our humour because theirs is the same. It seems the Boston Tea Party stripped "Americans" of irony.
The Saint was and is English. Even when Charteris went off to the US for good in around 1932, he kept his hero English. His choice.
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rosian
16 years ago
Charteris was still alive. He rejected it. He refused to have his name connected with it. And no wonder.
Updating the Saint? Turning him into an American? Weird. Even Bond hasn't been turned into an American yet. Please leave our English heroes as English. Americans have plenty of their own.
And I'm not a man, thanks. As for imagination - read the books. They are infinitely better than this movie.
I didn't think Kilmer was a great actor in this movie. He was average. He did what the script demanded. It's fairly watchable.
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rosian
16 years ago
Watched it twice. I did say, remember, that it's not a bad movie if you ignore the links with the Saint. The issue is that it's nothing to do with the books or even the TV series and as I recall Charteris rejected it. I'm not surprised. He complained at a lot of the TV series too. I can't recall ever seeing a version of The Saint that was really up to the standard of the books but Roger Moore is the best so far.
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