Bullet to Beijing is another Harry Palmer installment of the series that started with The IPCRESS File back in the 1960s. It was the first Palmer film in 30 years.
Unfortunately, it’s terrible.
It was supposedly filmed for theaters then released direct-to-video because it was so bad. And Michael Caine has reported that filming this was the worst experience of his career, and he threatened to retire in the middle of it.
Harry is forcibly retired from the service about two minutes into the film, which seems weird. Then he’s flown to Russia by a mysterious employer and given the job of recovering a biological agent called The Red Death. At some point, he’s told that it’s on a train across Siberia to Beijing, so that’s where most of the film happens.
There were a lot of characters, and I’m not totally sure what they were all doing. At some point, it’s revealed that his employer is smuggling the weapon to North Korea, which got me wondering why he hired Harry in the first place? I couldn’t remotely figure out how the plot fit together and why everyone was doing what they were doing. To top it off, there’s a weird sequence in the middle which reminded me of Planes, Trains, and Automobiles.
There’s some interesting casting. Jason Connery has a role (son of Sean), and Mia Sara is there too (Sloane from Ferris Bueller). Incidentally, those two would marry a year later, until she divorced him and married Jim Henson’s son.
I rented it in HD, but the film quality was awful. And there’s a weird soundtrack which plays in the background of almost every scene.