Breakinger A Brilliant Conflict

Neive Bellamy Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

Kaydan Christian A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

Sienna-Rose Mclaughlin The movie really just wants to entertain people.

mgruebel The Saint did not take off as a franchise - but the film is a bit better than its rating might suggest.Part of the problem is that it has predecessors: adventure books from the 20s through 80s, a 60s TV series with Roger Moore that many people liked, and so forth. This film does not live up to the style of the books or the TV incarnation, and that may be part of the reason for its low rating. As a stand-alone action spy thriller, it's quite entertaining, with the obligatory plot holes pulling it down from a really high score, but fun to watch nonetheless.Val Kilmer plays The Saint, who witnessed the death of another youngster at a cruel religious orphanage when he escaped. Two decades later, The Saint is an internationally active go-to man for difficult jobs, like stealing a microchip from a Russian industrial magnate. That he does, and soon the plot evolves into a chase for a cold fusion formula. The formula was only half worked out by smart and beautiful physicist Emma (Elizabeth Shue) when Kilmer steals it. The film then takes some improbable turns to get the main characters near the clutches of the evil industrial magnate, who wants to use the non-functional formula to discredit Russia's elected president during an energy crisis. At the last minute, with the aid of a Russian scientist, the good guys get the formula to work, and in the epilogue The Saint manages yet again to evade British police.The Saint evades everyone with elaborate disguises, which make the movie fun to watch. Kilmer demonstrated that he can really act, although he's not quite a Peter Sellers when it comes to playing a bundle of different characters. The chemistry (or should I say, physics) between Shue and Kilmer is great, so the romantic entanglements in this action thriller also hold up.The movie well reflects the hopes for détente and democratization in Russia held in the West in the 90s, and now soundly dashed by the interminable Putkin regime. The energy crisis theme rings truer and truer with passing years.Occasionally the film moves slowly, and there are unnecessary plot holes that could have been fixed quite easily with better scripting, but none of these minor problems detract from the jolly good 100 minutes of fun that The Saint brings to the screen. I've seen it a couple of times, and like good James Bond flicks (Thunderball et al.), it can be enjoyed more than once.

Veronika Vykoukalova I think that if there was a hitparade of clichés this movie would hit most of them.Story of tragic children love, which leads to the main character being a human chameleon, who picks his names after Catholic saints until he's tasked with stealing formulas from lonely romantic scientists, only to fall in love with her and risking everything just to save her from the terrible villains (who, according to number of other clichés, are Russian). Of course, she searches for him, and once again, the star-crossed lovers are running for their lives. Of course the whole movie ends well - the thief escapes the clutches of Justice, and poof, happy ending.Giving the rating I did mostly because I like clichés and because I liked how villainy the villains were. Oh, and for Frankie. I really liked her character.

Prismark10 The Saint is a Robin Hood type criminal character devised by Leslie Charteris a Chinese Singaporean. The Saint had a series of short films in the 1940s however made it big when Roger Moore portrayed him for a television series in the 1960s that became an international hit.In this big budget film starring Val Kilmer we have an attempt to re- invent the character. As a homage to Charteris we have scenes of him as a boy in a Catholic boarding school in the Far East. In the present day he is a criminal for hire who steals secrets and formulas and uses aliases that are Catholic Saints and is a master of disguise.The Saint is hired by a Russian businessman and aspiring politician to get a secret cold fusion formula from a young scientist played by Elisabeth Shue. You never for a moment buy Shue as a brilliant scientist and Kilmer falls for her and finds out that he needs to outwit the Russians and save the Russian Premiere as well as saving Shue. The story is all over the place and Shue's gut feeling that her formula is right without any scientific basis is laughable. There is good chemistry between Kilmer and Shue but the film itself is up and down in tempo and Kilmer never behaves like The Saint we know from the TV series.Ultimately Kilmer seems to be enjoying himself trying different accents but he never comes across The Saint which is the film's biggest failing.

J D The Saint is a fun, well paced jaunt into the world of Simon Templar. Simon Templar can be looked at as a rogue mercenary who does dangerous and technically advanced jobs that only a handful of people in the world can pull off. It features solid acting from its three main characters (Val Kilmer in the title role, with Elisabeth Shue and Rade Šerbedžija) and is never boring to watch. You can almost look at it as a precursor to the Jason Bourne style movies. While you cannot directly compare the plots of the two movies, after watching both you can see how the Bourne series adopts some of the action, intensity and overall feel of a movie like The Saint. I won't give away any more details, but it is worth watching and easily rates above its average score of 6 as seen on this website. It is a solid 7.5.