Blue Ice

It is a testament to Caine's screen presence that, as an ex-MI6 agent turned jazz club-owner, he almost single-handedly carries this routine thriller. Young is glamorously sexy as the US ambassador's wife whose passionate advances embroil Caine once more in the dangerous world of espionage, while director Mulcahy tempers his flashy visual style and unobtrusively propels the narrative forward. Ageing romantic Caine falls hard for Young, and agrees to help find an ex-lover who, she claims, is threatening to tell the tabloids about their torrid affair. But when Caine and a friendly copper track her old flame to a seedy hotel, the bodies start piling up and Caine finds himself on the wrong end of a murder investigation. You don't need a billion dollar brain to discern the echoes of Caine's Harry Palmer character. So despite a promising set-up, not even Caine can dispel an air of desperate atavism.