Michael Caine’s regrettable collaboration with Sean Connery’s son: “My worst professional experience ever”
Over the years, Michael Caine has appeared in a number of sequels, but only once has he headlined an entire multi-film franchise as its leading man and focal point. When the time came to round out that association, though, it sent him spiralling to a new professional low.
The two-time Academy Award winner has Beyond the Poseidon Adventure, Jaws: The Revenge, Austin Powers in Goldmember, The Dark Knight, Journey 2: The Mysterious Island, and Now You See Me 2 among his back catalogue of follow-ups, so it’s fair to say his track record has always been a little spotty.
Still, when he took centre stage in a franchise of his own, the first instalment ended up becoming a classic in its own right. Designed to be the antithesis to James Bond – which became increasingly ironic when Sean Connery was playing 007 at the time – Harry Palmer was the everyman agent of espionage audiences could root for in 1965’s The Ipcress File.
Striking while the iron was hot, Caine reprised the part in Funeral in Berlin and Billion Dollar Brain in consecutive years, although the second or third time didn’t mark the charm when the sequels failed to live up to the high bar set by the opener. For almost 30 years, there was never an inkling that the star would ever play Palmer again until he ended up shooting two more entries back-to-back.
Unlike the initial trio, Bullet to Beijing and Midnight in Saint Petersburg weren’t based on novels written by author Len Deighton, nor did they play on the big screen. Instead, the fourth and fifth films in the Harry Palmer saga were shot back-to-back on location in Russia and premiered exclusively on the American network Showtime in August 1995 and February 1996.
There was admittedly some neat symmetry in Caine dusting off the role of Palmer – who existed in the 1960s as a counterpoint to Connery’s Bond – for a fresh pair of adventures where his long-time close friend‘s son Jason took second billing as Nikolai Petrov, but the esteemed veteran ended up referring to the movies as “my worst professional experience ever”.
Reflecting on the invitation to “work with an old friend” when the prospect of a Palmer comeback was first floated, Caine lamented to The Daily Mail how “what I was about to do almost finished me off.” The cast and crew’s hotel was located right in the middle of organised crime territory, and the budget was no non-existent the actor recalled how “the filming itself was a joke.”
With inadequate toilet facilities, Caine decided to piss against the walls of the soundstage, which plunged him to the brink of an existential crisis: “So this is where my career has ended I thought to myself, in the toilet.” There was still almost 30 years of his career to come in retrospect, but the man himself could only see himself heading down the figurative shitter after things had reached a new nadir.
He did at least enjoy working with the second generation of the Connery acting clan, but playing Palmer again proved to be such a disastrous move it left him at his lowest ebb.
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