The Fourth Protocol
Short description
The Fourth Protocol is a Cold War thriller set in Britain. A Soviet agent is smuggled into the country under a false identity and settles in a quiet town near an American air base, where he works on assembling a nuclear device. British intelligence, meanwhile, picks up signs that something is being brought in piece by piece, and an MI5 officer begins to trace the operation. The scheme is meant to breach a 1968 agreement among the major nuclear powers that bans planting atomic weapons on foreign soil, and to strain the relationship between Britain and the United States.
John Mackenzie directed the film, which was adapted from Frederick Forsyth's novel; Forsyth wrote the screenplay, and Timothy Burrill produced it. Mackenzie had previously made The Long Good Friday and The Honorary Consul, and it was the fourth of the seven features listed for him. Michael Caine plays the investigating officer, John Preston, with Pierce Brosnan as the Soviet agent, Ned Beatty as Borisov, Joanna Cassidy as Irina Vassilievna, Julian Glover as Brian Harcourt-Smith and Michael Gough as Sir Bernard Hemmings. The production was made in the United Kingdom on a budget of about 6 million dollars and took roughly 12 million dollars worldwide.
On IMDb the film holds 6.5 out of 10 from around 12,000 votes, and on TMDB 6.3 out of 10 from 213 votes. A critics' rating of 5.8 out of 10 from 21 reviews places it slightly below both audience scores.
What's left behind the scenes
- The film's title refers to a fictional secret protocol to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (approved by the UN General Assembly on June 12, 1968), which contains an agreement between nuclear powers that the delivery of nuclear warheads to targets should only be carried out by conventional means (i.e., by air or missiles). In this film, the protocol prohibits leaving nuclear warheads in locked storage cells or delivering them by mail or other similar methods.
- Before filming began on this movie, Michael Caine and the author of the original novel (1984), Frederick Forsyth, had been friends for nearly ten years. This is the fourth of Forsyth’s novels to be adapted for the screen, but Caine had not appeared in the previous three film adaptations of his work. This time, Forsyth and Caine jointly financed the project to ensure they had complete control over the adaptation of this novel. They are both credited as executive producers in the credits.
- Filming took place in Finland instead of the Soviet Union. It lasted only one week.
Auditions in India
Casting calls in USA
Castingi w Polsce
Кастинги в Україні
