The High Commissioner

source: The High Commissioner

Nobody Runs Forever

I have always liked Rod Taylor and Christopher Plummer so I was pleased to see this movie for this and other reasons as they played side by side. The plethora of reviews on this have gone from one end to the other. However, I am surprised no one has mentioned (apart from one reviewer's brief reference to Alfred Hitchcock, the very similar plot of this movie to "The Man Who Knew Too Much" starring James Stewart and Doris Day. Both of these have the same sub plot of an assassination attempt of a high official. This movie was good. In some aspects predictable but still some surprises. Although being made in 1968 when our Opera House was no where near completion, the camera cleverly steers clear of the Opera House construction site, in the parts of the view from the "Premier's" office NOT "Prime Minister" as one reviewer stated.

Taylor and Plummer work well together in a very underrated, now forgotten thriller. They play off each other very well. Taylor plays an Australian cop and of course excels. He's a human wrecking ball surrounded by dumb Bobbies and even dumber British secret agents. There's no actor today like Taylor although Hugh Jackman might come close.

NOBODY RUNS FOREVER is a fairly engaging and likeable little British thriler from 1968, virtually forgotten about today but worth taking a look at thanks to a genial performance from lead actor Rod Taylor, for once getting a chance to play an Aussie. He's flown over to the UK to arrest and take back to Australia a politician, played by Christopher Plummer in his usual slightly sleazy way. Taylor becomes Plummer's unwitting bodyguard when it becomes apparent that someone is determined to see him dead. This film boasts some fine fight and chase sequences, although it's a little slower in between during some of the romantic, sub-Bond style moments. The strong supporting cast includes a typically loathesome Derren Nesbitt, an alluring Daliah Lavi, Calvin Lockhart as a tough agent, and Clive Revill as Plummer's butler.

This is certainly not a bad film: the script maintains an air of uncertainty as to who is and who is not in the conspiracy to kill Plummer, there are some frantic fight scenes, a nice elegiac score, the performances are fine, putting in more emotion than usual for the genre, and the Goddess-like Daliah Lavi & the beautiful Camilla Sparv more than fill out the required "babe quotient" (as I've said before, these 60's spy thrillers are almost always a sure bet if you want to see some incredibly beautiful women). However, there is not much here that you have not seen before. Perhaps it says something about the greatness of Hitchcock that even one of his widely considered "lesser" pictures ("Topaz") is still better than this movie. (**1/2)