The saint
Language : English / Russian
Year of release : 1997
Run time : 1h56m
Genre : Action / Thriller
Cast : Val Kilmer, Elisabeth Shue
The movie is based on the Simon Templar character created in 1928 by Leslie Charteris in the The Saint series of books, published until 1983.
While at the Saint Ignatius Orphanage, a little boy named John Rossi refuses to answer the mean priest’s question as he says his name is not John Rossi, that’s a name the priests gave him, and he refuses to take it. The priest says all the orphans were named after saints, and punishes John, and the other children. John manages to open the lock and feed the children with the food which was locked from them, but left near them, until John repented.
He calls himself Simon Templar and manages to also open the girls’ section of the orphanage, as he wants to say good bye to the girl he had a crush on. Unluckily, the nuns see some girls are missing, and wake the priests up, and as the priests come with dogs, looking for them, one dog jumps the little girl, and she falls from her floor to the ground level.
Now a grown up, Simon still has nightmares about that night. He is in Moscow, at the Tretiak Oil and Gas Industries Head Office, stealing a microchip, as he is a professional thief nicknamed The Saint, due to the fact he is using Catholic saints names as aliases.
After, he is trying to sell them their microchip back to them for millions of dollars.
Ironically, Simon is also hired by Tretiak to steal a cold fusion formula discovered by electrochemist Emma Russell, who works at the Oxford University. Doing research on her, he turns into who he thinks she likes to get close to her -a romantic artist who’s into poetry- , as he can’t find her formula at her place. And that is because -as he finds out later- she keeps it in her bra.
Simon falls for her and doesn’t want to steal her formula anymore, but Tretiak threatens to k1ll her, so he does, hoping she’ll be left alone.
Emma goes to the police, and she finds out Thomas More, the alias he gave her, is a thief and a master of disguise.
I found the movie Ok, it didn’t bore me, but I didn’t find it that amazing either. I liked Simon’s disguises, and Val Kilmer’s ability to become different people with their own quirks and accents.
The acting was good.
The soundtrack was good, it had pretty good songs of the 90’s that I like.
The visual effects were good, the disguises Simon puts on.
The Saint received mixed reviews, with a 50 metascore from the critics and a 7.0 score from the audience on Metacritic, and a 30% rating from the critics and 63% from the audience on Rotten Tomatoes, and a score of 6.2 on IMDB.
Cinema Score audiences graded the movie a B+.
The movie grossed almost 170 million dollars at the box office, against a budget of 90 million dollars.
Actors like Ralph Fiennes, Mel Gibson, Arnold Schwarzenegger, George Clooney, Kevin Costner, Johnny Depp and Daniel Day-Lewis, were considered to play Simon.
You can watch the full movie on the Dailymotion platform:
https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x9rzsl8
Rating : Worth a watch ?