** Spoiler warning **
I remember catching part of this late one evening on telly when I was much younger and recalled it being fairly good. Then the DVD came out and I was on to it quickly.
Save your Nelsons, lads.
What this film has going for it is the moody, grey 1970s cinematography giving it a dose of realism, the beauty of Diane Keen, and the groovy score, but there's little more. The sound on my DVD was awful. David Wickes' direction is not of his usual high standard and Ranald Graham seems to have inserted violence just because he could.
Even Regan and Carter seem to lack their usual panache from the TV series, and I could have done without the thought of the former exposing himself to Carter and his neighbours in one scene. As to Barry Foster, his "American" accent seems to derive from somewhere between Dick van Dyke in Mary Poppins and the entire cast of Mind Your Language. It was that bad.
I have a problem with the script in general. Graham tries to politicize it, but one gets the feeling these elements are tacked on to the murders to make the film supposedly "intelligent". It fails on that score. If Graham had a one-hour format, he could have succeeded his 'Blind Run' episode on The Professionals is a superior work.
He creates so many loose ends that it is tidily summarized by a civil servant 10 minutes before the close. Regan asks one or two questions and the whole conspiracy is explained in about 60 sec, while reminding him that he's still bound by the Official Secrets Act.
This is all done with the production budget of period television. Here's Regan in an old Ford Escort and Carter in a (then-) 10-year-old Vauxhall Viva. No prizes for guessing whether they'd wind up with a few dents.
The dissatisfying ending, as an earlier reviewer stated, is played up for controversy but is ultimately weak having parallels with other Graham scripts. It tries to leave things up in the air as though we have to guess how Regan might get himself out of his pickle. What pickle? Come to think of it, what conspiracy?
It's one of those rare cases where the sequel is superior to the original. That could be, however, fond childhood memories coming through again.
I remember catching part of this late one evening on telly when I was much younger and recalled it being fairly good. Then the DVD came out and I was on to it quickly.
Save your Nelsons, lads.
What this film has going for it is the moody, grey 1970s cinematography giving it a dose of realism, the beauty of Diane Keen, and the groovy score, but there's little more. The sound on my DVD was awful. David Wickes' direction is not of his usual high standard and Ranald Graham seems to have inserted violence just because he could.
Even Regan and Carter seem to lack their usual panache from the TV series, and I could have done without the thought of the former exposing himself to Carter and his neighbours in one scene. As to Barry Foster, his "American" accent seems to derive from somewhere between Dick van Dyke in Mary Poppins and the entire cast of Mind Your Language. It was that bad.
I have a problem with the script in general. Graham tries to politicize it, but one gets the feeling these elements are tacked on to the murders to make the film supposedly "intelligent". It fails on that score. If Graham had a one-hour format, he could have succeeded his 'Blind Run' episode on The Professionals is a superior work.
He creates so many loose ends that it is tidily summarized by a civil servant 10 minutes before the close. Regan asks one or two questions and the whole conspiracy is explained in about 60 sec, while reminding him that he's still bound by the Official Secrets Act.
This is all done with the production budget of period television. Here's Regan in an old Ford Escort and Carter in a (then-) 10-year-old Vauxhall Viva. No prizes for guessing whether they'd wind up with a few dents.
The dissatisfying ending, as an earlier reviewer stated, is played up for controversy but is ultimately weak having parallels with other Graham scripts. It tries to leave things up in the air as though we have to guess how Regan might get himself out of his pickle. What pickle? Come to think of it, what conspiracy?
It's one of those rare cases where the sequel is superior to the original. That could be, however, fond childhood memories coming through again.