The Saint
2017
The Cast
I have to admit that I enjoyed this take on Simon Templar. I do agree with other reviewers that the TV series and the films haven't really got The Saint's personality and morality perfect. This is a hard thing to do as each medium has limitations, but this is pretty close - and was probably meant to reflect Roger Moore's TV character rather than Leslie Charteris' original, and it comes near. It's even nice that the better previous Templar's appear in the film.
What the writers, Jesse Alexander and Tony Giglio, also had to contend with was bringing the character up-to-date. So enter a tech-savvy partner, Patricia Holm (Eliza Dushku), who can actually hold her own in a fight. For me this is a good idea as it gives Templar somebody to work off and flirt with, lessening the sexist machismo, which you could get away with in the '60's. The writers also totally blanked out the grey area of murder as an option by turning The Saint into a martial arts expert who loves his sleeper hold and knockout punches - if this had been made for English telly or by HBO or Fox then the murderous side of The Saint may have made it into the story. Even when the helicopter crashes and explodes the bad guy walks away... however, there's a reason for this which is shown in a later scene.
Also, nowadays, people like conspiracies and more tangled webs of mystery... and this story has that. Not only do we have Interpol and the FBI after The Saint there's also The Brotherhood - a shadowy alliance that was formed to destroy The Knights Templar. Thought to be extinct, we learn that the Knights are still around and Simon's father was a member. This and The Saint's latest case of a missing two and a half billion dollars are slowly revealed to be interwoven, though we are shown this pretty early on.
So there's a lot of story for your money in this little film and the director, Barbarash, does a great job of tying it all together with action, wit, and good acting. I wasn't looking forward to watching this as I remembered the Val Kilmer tragedy (though a great theme track). However, I was happy to be wrong. This is an enjoyable and watchable film and I'd recommend this to all Saint fans. It's different from the original - but it has to be - but it's not all bad... in fact, it's mostly good.
I give this rendition a saintly 7.25 out of 10.
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