Harry Palmer is a character played by Michael Caine who is very much unlike James Bond. While Bond is amazingly athletic, sexy and,...well...PERFECT, Palmer is a spy who is none of these---just very lucky!

"Billion Dollar Brain" begins with Harry no longer working for MI-6 but is now a private eye--albeit one with no clients. When the agency tries to get him to return, he's insistent on remaining a free agent--and soon gets an odd case involving making a delivery. The recipient turns out to be an old associate (Karl Malden)--one who is working for a VERY eccentric megalomaniac Texan (Ed Begley Senior). Apparently, Begley insists that the Soviet Union is about to fall apart--all they need is some assistance from him and his private army. However, his intelligence is wrong--all the information his agent (Malden) is giving him is made up and Malden is pocketing the money supposedly going to pay the insurgents in Latvia--though there are NONE! When Harry tries to tell the nutty Texan, he won't listen--his computer (the billion dollar brain) tells him the plan WILL succeed. What's Harry to do? What about the potential of this nut starting WWIII? And what of Harry's Soviet friends--such as the rather avuncular Colonel (Oskar Homolka)?

The film has some good acting going for it. Caine is wonderful and although Begley's part is far from subtle, his scene-chewing is captivating. The only real serious shortcoming in the film is the unlikeliness of it all--and the computer angle certainly doesn't help. But, if you turn off your brain and just watch, then it does deliver solid undemanding entertainment.

By the way, on a sad note, this would be Françoise Dorléac's last film. The pretty blonde actress was a large part of this, her last film. Shortly after shooting was completed, she was killed in a road accident. And, incidentally, she was the older sister of Catherine Deneuve.

Former MI5 Harry Palmer (Michael Caine) is now a private detective. He gets a phone call from a computer voice directing him to a package in an airport locker. He's told to go to Helsinki where he gives the thermos to Anya (Françoise Dorléac) and his old friend Leo Newbigen (Karl Malden). He is soon suspicious of Leo and his mysterious boss. He is coerced to work for MI5 Colonel Ross (Guy Doleman) who tells him that the thermos is filled with a deadly virus and the conspiracy is headed by an oil tycoon General Midwinter (Ed Begley).

This spy thriller isn't serious or realistic. It's basically a lower grade espionage movie with a convoluted premise. It does jump around a little with out-of-the-way locales, virus, beauties and Russians. Director Ken Russell made a competent but somewhat unimpressive movie. It's a low tension mystery rather than a high power thriller. Then the movie turns into a spoof with the cartoon villain. Its craziness is just enough fun to be interesting.

I haven't seen the intervening film "Funeral In Berlin" in the Michael Caine/Harry Palmer Len Deighton trilogy of mid-60's British spy-thrillers and so came to "Billion Dollar Brain" via "The Ipcress File" which I have seen and enjoyed. I was intrigued to learn that it was an early directorial outing for infant-terrible Ken Russell and it was certainly interesting to see what flair he could bring to a typical, almost mundane "Cold War" spy narrative.

To be fair though, I found the whole movie pretty under-powering, not helped by a plot that seems to borrow more from the escapist world of James Bond than the workaday environs of Harry Palmer, I mean a deranged billionaire Commie-hating Southern US General with a private army and super computer planning to trigger a war by invading Latvia! I'm aware that Bond producer Cubby Broccoli was also producer on the Palmer films but believe he seriously got his wires crossed here, to the extent that we get a flashy Bond-type title sequence, tons and tons of expensive-looking military hardware (apart from the "cheap-as-chips" afore-mentioned super computer!) and a horde of extras who reach an icy end on the frozen wastes of Latvia.

Contained in the over-prolix story are the usual devices of our man's anti-Establishment cussedness, cross and double-cross, love interest and the usual hero-saves-the-day conclusion, but in truth, rather like the snowy landscapes which proliferate in the background, I was left pretty cold and dreary by the film as a whole.

Caine seems to show less conviction in his acting this time around and for me his style doesn't bond with Karl Malden's either, while Ed Begley goes over the top of Everest as the mad General Midwinter. Director Russell handles his locations well, gives us one or two interesting shots, like the initial scene where we get to see by torch-light the dishevelment of P.I. Harry's shambolic office and a scene where a just beaten-up Palmer comes around amongst a score of others like him, like so many broken dolls and yes, I did smile at the mild nudity scene which prefigures "Women In Love" by a few years.

But as I said though, it takes a long time to get to the end, there's never really any sense of danger or suspense at any time and for me the actors all look confused throughout. Perhaps it's not surprising therefore that a fourth instalment wasn't commissioned after this outing.