Chinese Boxes

Langdon Marsh (an expatriate American played with the charm of early Nicholson by Patton) is trapped in a ghostly, neon-streaked Berlin after the sudden deaths of his heroin-smuggling associate and a teenage girl. A bar-owner friend and a mysterious 'customs' man (Coltrane performing an Orson Welles cameo ahead of his years) both offer Marsh a way out, but only as a pawn in their duplicitous, gun-toting game. With an excess of plot staving off any safe resolution, the reduction of character psychology to a guiltless state of wonder proves a virtue. Despite the contingencies of low-budget filming - bold colour camera-work and blatant post-synchronisation - there is more fun to be had here than in the current British infatuation for the 'Laura Ashley school of film-making'.