Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #8429 in DVD
• Released on: 2006-08-07
• Rating: Suitable for 12 years and over
• Format: PAL
• Original language: English
• Subtitled in: Dutch, Spanish, Czech, Finnish, Italian, French, Hungarian, Danish, German, Polish
• Number of discs: 1

Synopsis
British secret agent Major John Tarrant (Michael Caine, Get Carter) has his son kidnapped by ruthless gunrunners who demand a batch of uncut diamonds in exchange for his son's life. As Tarrant embarks on a chilling trail of revenge, he is forced to steal the diamonds and he finds himself having to not only contend with the criminals but his colleagues too. Action director Don Siegel (Dirty Harry) takes the unusual step of making a British spy thriller. The Black Windmill is based on the book Seven Days to a Killing by Clive Eggleton and features a host of good performances by the talented cast, which includes Donald Pleasance (Halloween) as Tarrant's boss Cedric Harper.

Customer Reviews

Efficiently average but rather unexciting with it
The Black Windmill has a workable premise, a unspectacularly decent cast (Delphine Seyrig, Donald Pleasance, Janet Suzman, Clive Revill, Dennis Quilley, Edward Hardwicke and Joss Ackland among them) and a good director in Don Siegel, but it never catches fire. Michael Caine, playing a very different spy to Harry Palmer - more of a middle class career army officer who never needed to be blackmailed into the job - finds himself being set up by the vicious kidnappers of his young son to steal some diamonds intended for some dubious operation, eventually finding himself having to avoid his employers, the French and British police and take out the very bad guys (hey, it is John Vernon). All of which sounds at least more energetic than the film actually is. It moves along with competence, dotting the `i's and crossing the `t's, but even though a surprising amount happens in the last half hour, it never seems to develop any tension or urgency. Along the way there's a nice Sean Connery joke and a neat scene that manages to reference both The sound of Music and Caine's own Battle of Britain, but the good Scope composition and the typical 70s Roy Budd score make more of an impression than anything else in the film.

Uiniversal's DVD has no extras, but it does boast a good 2.35:1 widescreen transfer that at least ensures the film looks its best and has none of the panning-and-scanning problems of the TV prints.

Good but not great
This isn't up there with The Ipcress File, Funeral in Berlin or Get Carter - but that's not to say it's a bad film. The photography and music give it some class, the cast are excellent and the plot is interesting rather than thrilling. It does have it's moments though, and I would be quite happy to watch it again.

Michael Caine supported by the likes of John Vernon, Janet Suzman, Donald Pleasance, Joss Ackland and Delphine Seyrig can't be a complete waste of time - we even get a brief but memorable appearance by Catherine Schell. I agree it's more likely to be enyoyed by fans of Michael Caine and British espionage films in general, but it's by no means a duffer.

Nice dvd copy but a slow movie, that missed it's chance to be great
A nice letter box 2.35.1 image & no extras, which is not that bad.

But the film itself just seems to amble on. Fine performances from the cast it just seems that Don Siegle, who gave us terrific paced movies as Dirty Harry & Telefon just seem to be stuck in the slow groove with this 1.

A fine book which had a really interesting story line just seems to plodding along.

No doubt with the never ending stream of remakes going on, maybe this 1 will reappear.

Not terrible, just not great.