Frederick Forsyth is one of the greatest thriller writers to have picked up a pen with THE DEVIL`S ALTERNATIVE probably his best book concerning Ukrainian dissidents , a hijacked supertanker , a Kremlin power struggle and a hero who`s a middle aged Scotsman . Sean Connery would have been perfect but many Forsyth novels probably wouldn`t make good movies since the plots are complex and there`s often a myriad of characters with long back stories , information overload on how the KGB operate etc . THE FOURTH PROTOCOL unlike THE DEVIL`S ALTERNATIVE has a fairly simplistic plot which makes it an ideal story to be adapated into a screenplay but there`s a drawback - The story is predictable

!!!! MILD SPOILERS !!!!

THE FOURTH PROTOCOL centres around a nasty Soviet plot to win the cold war by exploding an atomic bomb at an American base making it look like an accident caused by the Americans leading to unilateral nuclear disarmament and the break up of NATO leaving those dastardly commies to invade Europe . The plot had actually been used before in the James Bond movie OCTOPUSSY and in many ways this does feel like a mind bending spy movie with Harry Palmer ( Michael Caine ) taking on communist traitor James Bond ( Peirce Brosnan ) , bizarre to say the least but as strange as it seems it is somewhat compelling , even though the climax is very predictable with the good guy trying to stop the bad guy detonating the bomb

There are a few problems with the screenplay though . We have several scenes that don`t really add anything to the plot like the scene where Caine`s character smacks a couple of skin heads . Very admirable though it adds nothing to either plot or character development since we know he`s already a good guy , no need to prove it . I also couldn`t help noticing a rather ridiculous scene where the baddie decides to cut the throat of a possible witness , wouldn`t this draw attention to himself ? Wouldn`t the victim`s blood splatter all over his clothes ? And why would the witness need to be killed ? It`s not like he`s going to run to police and say " I tried to get off with a man in the gents toilets and I saw him recieve a radio from an airline pilot . He must be a KGB agent or something "

Like most Forsyth stories there`s a lot of characters ( Maybe too many ) and they`re played by familiar British character actors but few of them make an impact with the exception of Ian Richardson and Anton Rodgers who both appear in the best scene of the movie where an intelligence chief confronts a traitor . If you think acting is a doddle think how you`d react if a director said to you " Okay , you play a dogmatic patriot , you`d do anything to stop the world being over run by communist tyranny and you`ve done your level best to stop this happening . But then this character has found you out and worse he`s just told you that you`ve been helping these nasty evil reds all along " how would you play the scene ? Richardson and Rodgers are superb in this scene even if it doesn`t really have anything to do with the main plot

A fairly good thriller even if it`s not tightly plotted and you know where it`s heading

When this film was made nobody suspected that the Soviet Union would no longer exist in five years time; they were still the bad guys of choice for spy thrillers. Here a Soviet agent; Major Valeri Petrofsky has been tasked with a mission which if successful could spell the end of the North Atlantic alliance: his mission is to assemble a small nuclear bomb inside the United Kingdom and detonate it next to a US airbase... with the intention that everybody will believe it was an accident involving weapons on the base. Against him there is John Preston, a British agent, who stumbles upon the plot when one of the people bringing in one of the bomb components is killed in an accident.

While there are a few plot holes it is possible to suspend ones disbelief as this is a fine thriller with great performances from lead actors Michael Caine and Peirce Brosnon who play Preston and the ice cold Petrofsky respectively. The action keeps up throughout the film from the start when traitor Kim Philby is killed to the end where Preston struggles with Petrofsky to prevent him detonating the bomb. That first scene was a bit of a problem for me however as it involved the killing of a real person who was very much alive at the time of the film's release; I think it would have been better to have had a renamed fictionalised version of him. Having recently watch Michael Caine play a similar role in the 1965 thriller 'The Ipcress File' it is great seeing that he can still be believable in such a role twenty years later.

Frederick Forsythe is always a reliable and successful writer, and many of his spy thriller novels have been made into movies. I would guess that Forsythe provided the inspiration for Tom Clancy and the people who wrote this script. There's quite a bit of technical stuff involved in this story of a KGB spy who is sent to England to detonate a nuclear device at the USAF base at Baywaters, England, the base I always thought was at Bayswater. No matter.

The KGB man is Pearse Brosnan and the British counter-terrorism agent who tracks him is Michael Caine, redoing his Palmer number from "The Ipcress File," only with more raucous animation.

It's pretty involving. After all, the stakes are high. The explosion will devastate everything within a two-mile radius and kill upwards of 5,000 people.

And there are exciting action scenes, especially a van in pursuit of a motorcycle and the inevitable final shoot out, with the wounded Brosnan's fingertip straining to reach the button that will detonate the fiendish device.

There are a couple of types of villains in movies like this. One is the suave and debonair type -- George Sanders or James Mason, maybe, in "North by Northwest." Then there's the jocular, almost likable type of killer, always a smile and a wisecrack, like John Travolta in "Broken Arrow" or Jack Nicholson as The Joker. Finally, there's the type that Brosnan fits into in this film -- determined, distant, touched by passions perhaps but only by selfish ones, and absolutely determined. It might be the assassin in "The Day of the Jackal" or Arnold in "The Terminator." Brosnan is actually quite good. He has a pretty face and is capable of an icy demeanor, the kind that brushes away the caressing hand of a pretty neighbor because she doesn't fit into his plans. And there has never been a movie that was torpedoed by the presence of Michal Caine. Caine also gets a bonus point for doing a fine drunk. He's hilarious. He wobbles when he walks and his voice gets high and cracks.

I've seen this twice. The first time made more of an impression. The second time, oddly, I found myself getting confused about some of the intricacies of the plot. But it was still enjoyable.