Review: Billion Dollar Brain (1967)
Despite this movie having both Michael Caine and Karl Malden, two of my favorite actors in it, I really cannot recommend it. The movie remains the weakest of the Harry Palmer movies and I only recommend it for people like me that want to complete out the series of films. Athough it has been 20 or more years I remember being disappointed with the book too.
The basic story is that Harry Palmer gets blackmailed into rejoining MI-5. He encounters a shadowy organization that is run by a Texas billionaire with neo-fascist delusions who wants to foment rebellion in the Soviet Union. Harry has to try and stop him.
Whereas the first two Harry Palmer movies where thinking man's alternatives to the James Bond films, because they contrasted so much with the glitz of Bond. The Billion Dollar Brain is more of a direct satire - even a parody of the bloat that had overcome the Bond films by 1967 - yet it was not a comedy so the film gets sort of stuck inbetween - not really a good spy movie and not an outright parody either. Very unsatisfying.
My take is, only hard core Harry Palmer fans should buy this. The first two films: The Ipcress File and Funeral in Berlin are very much worth buying.