Octopussy 1983

Keeping to the one from every two years cycle Roger Moore’s sixth outing as James Bond was Octopussy in 1983 a film which cost less than that two years previously and which also showed a further drop in takings to $187.4 m.

Octopussy as might suspected is the female lady of a band of adventurous, trained and skilled women based in India and with a world wide concoction of activities in including a circus. Yet another rogue Russian general is after causing World War III disaffected with the growing entente between east and West. He is replacing Russian jewellery and other treasures with fakes selling the originals on the open market in this instance a Faberge golden egg.

The film in fact begins with death of a British agent in East Berlin clutching a fake of the egg now on sale in London. The problem is that having lost the fake egg the villains need to buy back the original and return to where he it kept before discovery. This sets an interesting challenge for Bond who has been given a purchasing limit by the Brit Government. Bond cleverly swaps the eggs around and forces an Afghan prince (Louis Jordan) to pay half a million pounds for the fake egg ten times its actual market value. One of the princes females associates seduces Bond to get back the real egg and while she is successful he notices that she has the Tattoo of an Octopus. He then discovers the connection between the Prince and the renegade Russian general. Walter Gotell as head of the KGB, Geoffrey Keen as the Minister and the rest of gang are all busy in the background.

Bond also locates Octopussy as the head of the female cult, learns about the trade in real Russian priceless objects D’art via the circus which Octopussy owns and that its next performance is in East Germany prior to a visit to a USSAF base in West Germany. While Octopussy is aware of the trade, she does not know that on this visit the treasures have been replaced with a nuclear warhead to explode at the base. Bond has various adventures before getting to the Base dressed as a clown and persuading Octopussy she has been betrayed and getting her to help him dismantle the bomb.

Together with her forces they launch an attack on the Prince to regain the Russian treasures and after more adventures they are successful returning to the Island home of Octopussy for you know what while the Russians negotiate the return of their treasures and restore the stability between East and West. The film is unimaginative and revealed that the writers were struggling to invest good stories and the Creatives failing to find new visual tricks and delights.

　

For Your Eyes Only 1981

If Moonraker was the high point in terms of box office popularity for Roger Moore as James Bond, his fifth film revealed that the public had concluded that you can have enough of a good things with takings dropping to under $200 million in 1981 for the fifth project For Your Eyes Only.

The British spy boat St Georges, which holds the Automatic Targeting Attack Communicator (ATAC), the system used by the Ministry of Defence to communicate with and co-ordinate the Royal Navy's fleet of Polaris submarines, is sunk by a clever device the Ionian Sea.

This was the fifth time Roger Moore became James Bond who is ordered to retrieve the ATAC before the Soviets, as the transmitter could order attacks by the Polaris submarines' ballistic missiles. The concern is justified because the head of the KGB, General Gogol played once more by Walter Gotelll and with Geoffrey Keen as the Defence Minister and Bernard lee as M with Lois Maxwell as Miss Moneypenny. Overshadowing the Bond girls this time is Chaim Topol as Milos Columbo a former smuggler whose men help Bond in his search for the missing technology.

A marine archaeologist, Sir Timothy Havelock, who had been asked by the British to secretly locate the St Georges, is murdered with his wife by a Cuban hitman, Hector Gonzales. Bond goes to Spain to find out who hired Gonzales.

While spying on Gonzales' villa, Bond is captured by his men, but manages to escape as Gonzales is shot with an arrow. Outside, he finds the assassin was Melina Havelock, the daughter of Sir Timothy and the two escape. With the help of Q, Bond identifies a hitman in Gonzales' estate as Emile Leopold Locque, and then goes to Locque's possible base in Italy. There Bond meets his contact, Luigi Ferrara, and a well-connected Greek businessman and intelligence informant, Aris Kristatos, who tells Bond that Locque is employed by Milos Columbo, known as "the Dove" in the Greek underworld, Kristatos' former resistance partner during the Second World War. After Bond goes with Kristatos' protégée, figure skater Bibi Dahl who takes a shine for Bond, to a biathlon course, a group of three men which include East German biathlete Eric Kriegler chase Bond trying to kill him. Bond escapes, and then goes with Ferrara to bid Bibi farewell in an indoor ice rink where he fends off another attempt on his life by men in hockey gear. Ferrara is killed in his car, with a dove pin in his hand. Bond then travels to Corfu in pursuit of Columbo

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At a nightclub, he meets with Kristatos and asks how to meet Columbo, not knowing that Columbo's men are secretly recording their conversation. After Columbo and his mistress, Countess Lisl von Schlaf, argue, Bond offers to escort her home with Kristatos' car and driver. The two then spend the night together. In the morning Lisl and Bond are ambushed by Locque and Lisl is killed. But, before Locque can kill Bond, he is captured by Columbo's men, who then tells him that Locque was actually hired by Kristatos, who is working for the KGB to retrieve the ATAC

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Bond accompanies Columbo and his crew on a raid at one of Kristatos' opium-processing warehouses in Albania, where Bond uncovers naval mines similar to the one that sank the St Georges, suggesting it was not an accident. After the base is destroyed, Bond chases Locque and kills him.

Afterwards, Bond meets with Melina, and they recover the ATAC from the wreckage of the St Georges, but Kristatos is waiting for them when they surface and he takes the ATAC. After the two escape an assassination attempt, they discover Kristatos' rendezvous point when Melina's parrot repeats the phrase "ATAC to St. Cyril's". With the help of Columbo and his men, Bond and Melina break into abandoned mountaintop monastery, St. Cyril's. While Bond is climbing, Apostis attacks him, but is killed. As Columbo confronts Kristatos, Bond disposes of the biathlete Kriegler throwing and then retrieves the ATAC system and stops Melina from killing Kristatos after he surrenders. Kristatos tries to kill Bond with a hidden flick knife, but is killed by a knife thrown by Columbo. Gogol arrives by helicopter to collect the ATAC, but Bond destroys it first, saying "Détente, comrade. You don't have it; I don't have it." Bond and Melina later spend a romantic evening aboard her father's yacht. The film is very picturesque!

　

　

　

Moonraker 1979

While most of Roger Moore Bond films have become a hazy blur of miscellaneous images, Moonraker did register because of he final sequence in which Jaws and his girl friend escape the disintegrating space station back to earth, safety, and life happy ever after together. This 1979 film marked the beginnings of major expenditure on the films with $34 million but with continuing high reward at over $210 million box office returns

A Drax Industries Moonraker space shuttle on loan to the United Kingdom is hijacked in mid-air and Bond is called back from R and R to investigate. On his homeward journey Bond is sent flying out a plane by none other than Jaws but survive by taking the parachute from the pilot and Jaws lands into a circus tent..

　

Bond proceeds to the Drax Industries shuttle-manufacturing complex where he meets the owner of the company, Hugo Drax, and henchman Chang. Bond also meets an astronaut, Dr. Holly Goodhead and survives an assassination attempt via a centrifuge chamber. Bond is later aided by Drax's personal pilot, Corinne Dufour, as he finds blueprints for a glass vial made in Venice. Bond then foils another attempt on his life, using a hunting shotgun to shoot a sniper.

Upon discovering that Dufour assisted Bond's investigations, Drax has her killed. Bond then heads for Venice where he again encounters Goodhead and there is a splendid is chased through the canals by Drax's henchmen. He discovers a secret biological laboratory, and by accidentally poisoning the scientists there, he learns that the glass vials are to hold a nerve gas deadly to humans, but harmless to animals. As yet he does not know how this is to be used,

Chang attacks Bond and is killed, but during the fight, Bond finds evidence that Drax is moving his operation to Rio de Janeiro. Rejoining Goodhead, he deduces that she is a CIA agent spying on Drax. They promise to work together, but quickly dispense with the truce. Bond has saved one of the vials he found earlier, as the only evidence of the now-empty laboratory, giving it to M for analysis, who permits him to go to Rio de Janeiro under the pretence of being on leave.

In Rio, Bond meets his Brazilian contact Manuela. Drax hires Jaws to finish Chang's job of eliminating Bond. Bond meets Goodhead at the top of Sugarloaf Mountain, where they are attacked by Jaws on a cable car. After Jaws' car crashes he is rescued by an unlikely partner called Dolly , and the two fall in love his bringing about a major change in his character and motivation.

Bond and Goodhead played by Lois Childs are captured by henchmen, but Bond escapes and reports to an MI6 base in Brazil and learns that the toxin comes from a rare orchid indigenous to the Amazon jungle. Bond travels the Amazon River looking for Drax's research facility and again encounters Jaws and other henchmen. Bond escapes from his boat just before it hits the Iguazu Falls, and finds Drax's base. Captured by Jaws again, Bond is taken to Drax and witnesses four Moonraker’s lifting off. Drax explains that he stole the Moonraker because another in the fleet had developed a fault during assembly. Bond is reunited with Goodhead; they escape and successfully pose as pilots on the sixth shuttle. The shuttles dock with Drax's space station, hidden from radar by a cloaking device.

Once on board the station, Bond and Holly disable the radar jamming cloaking device, resulting in the US sending a platoon of Marines to intercept the now-visible space station. Jaws captures Bond and Holly and brings them to Drax.

Drax plans to destroy human life by launching fifty globes containing the toxin into the Earth's atmosphere. Before launching them, Drax also transported several dozen genetically perfect young men and women of varying races, to the space station. They would live there until Earth was safe again for human life; their descendants would be the seed for a "new master race". Bond persuades Jaws and Dolly to switch their allegiance by getting Drax to admit that anyone not measuring up to his physical standards would be exterminated and Jaws attacks Drax's guards.

A laser battle ensues both inside and outside the space station, in which Drax's guards and his master race are all killed. During the battle, Bond shoots Drax with a cyanide-tipped dart, then pushes him into an airlock and ejects him into space.

In order to destroy the three already launched globes and return to Earth, Goodhead and Bond use Drax's personal shuttle - at the same time observing Jaws and Dolly escape from the disintegrating space station. I thought this was the better of the Moore Bonds.

　

　

The Spy who, Love Me

The Spy who Love me cost $14 million to make in 1977 and amassed $185.4 to get the commercial aspects of the series back on track. The film was acclaimed as the best Roger Moore Bond and nominated for three Academy awards but without success.

A British and a Russian nuclear submarine disappears and we the audience learn that they are drawn into a massive super tanker floating dock where the crew are taken prisoner. Bond is having some R and R in an Skiing Cabin in Austria when he is summoned and where he is pursued by a small army of Russian agents who he evades by ski jumping off a mountainside opening a union jack parachute. He kills one of the agents.

He earns that someone has acquired a super submarine tracking system and he and the Russians go in pursuit in Egypt with a ‘Son et Lumiere’ production among the pyramids the setting for a mini adventure involving his Russian counterpart Anya Amasova, They are told to join forces by Walter Gotell as head of the KGB and Bernard Lee as M. Geoffrey Keen debuts as the Minister of defence in a role he continues for five films with Lois Maxwell as Miss Moneypenny and Desmond Llewelyn as Q and his technical tricks. The couple have their first encounter with Richard Kiel as Jaws one of the great Bond characters.

The couple work out that the man behind the submarine thefts is Curt Jurgens as Karl Stromberg who plans to trigger World war III by using the submarines to fire missiles at Russia and West and create a new underworld water civilization and which enables the latest Q car to be used as sports car which also becomes an under water craft. The pair become a couple after Bond saves her from the character Jaws but later she promises to kill him when their mission is over discovering that the agent Bond killed in the Austrian Alps was her boyfriend. The couple visit Stromberg at what appears to be his under water home but later they find that he has an extraordinary underwater Atlantis type of community which can rise above the sea bed to above the water level

The couple board a third nuclear submarine which is captured and in turn they are captured and separated. Bond manages to first rescue the crews of captured Russian, USA and British submarines and then cleverly reprogrammes the two missiles so instead of heading for Moscow and New York they destroy each other’s other submarines. Why the villains only launched one rocket from each submarine remains a fortunate puzzle.

Bond rescues the Russian girl, and Kills Stromberg in the process and they also appear to kill Jaws. The couple escape as the Atlantis is destroyed, The couple are seen having an intimate relationship by their superiors while Jaws escapes from the shark tank. I regarded this fil as OK than good and certainly did not merit Academy recognition depspite its popularity at the box office.

　

　

　

　

The Man with the Golden Gun 1974 second Roger Moore bond

The ninth film is The Man with the Golden Gun with Christopher Lee as the Man Scaramanga, Britt Eckland as the Bond girl and Hervé Villechaise as Nick Nack Scaramanga’s height challenged manservant creative accomplice. The film also cost $7 million in 1974 to make with box office totals down to under $100 m at 97.6.

A golden bullet with 007 is received at M16 and is correctly regarded as a challenge to Bond. Her finds that a character called Scaramanga has a Golden Gun made for him and gives up his normal duties to go privately go in search of the challenger.

Bond traces the supply of golden bullets via a belly dancer in Beirut to Macao and Hong Kong and a night club casino run by the Man’s mistress, He finds that the bullet has taken him away from his assignment involving a device to help solve the energy crisis and that this device has now come into the possession of Scaramanga and M and Q have their headquarters in the wreck of British ship in the harbour with Bond ordered to kill Scaramanga and retrieve the device.

Scaramanga is taking over the business of a Thai gangster and although he manages to retrieve the device all his good work is muck up by his stupid assistant Britt Eckland. In a car chase in Bangkok he encounters and is assisted by an on holiday with his wife Sheriff J W Pepper. Bond discovers that the golden bullet was in fact sent by Scaramanga’s mistress because she has been taken as a child and forced to work as a prostitute and wants to kill her employer. She dies.

Bonds assistant Miss Goodnight (Eckland has landed herself in the trunk of Sacramanga’s car which transforms itself into a plane, taking the girl and Nick Nack to his private Island hideaway.

Bond uses a tracking device with Goodnight to locate the island where he finds that the villain is using the energy device for a high tech solar powered plant which he wants to sell to the highest bidder.

The opening of film reveals Scaramanga with the help of Nick Knack using a area of mirrors and projections, The Fun House, to kill off a challenger for a large sum of money. It is now Bond’s turn to go head to head with Scaramanga in his Fun House where outwits the villain killing him. Ms Goonight continues much things up and pushing a henchman into a pool of liquid helium she caused the energy device to explode and blow up the island. The couple manage to escape in junk after another encounter with Nick Nack. The film involves an Asian agent in Hong Kong and Bangkok who ahs his mobile HQ in a train and has attractive daughters assisting, Lois Maxwell played the role of Miss Moneypenny for the 9^th of 14 times.

　

Live and Let Fie 1973 with Roger Moore

It was in December 2012 and January2013 that I viewed all the James Bond films in sequence breaking off from reporting the experience before Live and Let Die, the eight film and the first with Roger Moore who portrayed the character tongue in cheek throughout and was in my judgement the weakest Bond performer although his first film with $7 million budget is recorded as netting $161,8 million which explains why he went to reproduce the role time and time and time again.

Although based on an Ian Fleming book the film was created in the style of the Black exploitation drug culture genre which had become fashionable at the time and there are many racial references and stereotyping which we will not see today or hopefully ever again. The film is set in Harlem, New Orleans and a fictitious Caribbean Island with Bond on the trail of a Mr Big who turns out to be a Dr Kananga dictator of the Island where he grows heroin and where he has been flooding the market with free stuff to put his rivals out of business via his chain of Filet of Soul restaurants. He has killed three agents on his trail.

Kananga ‘s virgin girlfriend, Solitaire. has the power to read tarot cards (Jane Seymour) with unerring accuracy until James gets his hands on her, that is. Bond’s female CIA contact is in fact a double agent working with the dictator and she is killed to stop her telling James the truth after he also got his hands on her.

In New Orleans Bond finds himself about to be eaten by crocodiles in the backwoods and there is a great speed boat race which also involves the local tobacco chewing Sheriff J W Pepper played by Clifton James and who is to appear in another Bond film later.

On the Caribbean island the couple, that is Bond and Solitaire have to encounter voodoo and escape from a shark tank but they outwit Kananga who explodes after a shark pellet is forced into his mouth. They still have to escape the evil designs of Kanaka’s henchman Tee Hee Johnson who has an artificial pincer hand although the film has an ambiguous ending as sitting on the front of the train is voodoo man Baron Samedi another Kananga henchman. Bond’s CIA friend Felix Leitner also has a role in the film. There are some good images , including the last but the film did not lead me to waiting eagerly to see the next or to having any WOW factor moment and only rated about 5 to 6 on my Bond rating scale.

Men in Black 3

The second adventure film is Man in Black 3. I enjoyed the first in the series with the great Tommy Lee Jones as the senior specialist operator with the ability to wipe memories with a Dr Who type of hand gadget. He partners the young Will Smith and this film is primarily about how the relationship became established.

When Will Smith as was a young boy, played by Josh Brolin his father, a military/policeman, was killed during the capture by Jones of a notorious criminal Boris the Animal, the last of a vicious race of Boglodites and who is then imprisoned in secure unit on the moon with forty years passing. Unfortunately with the help of an expendable lady friend Boris escapes and commences to cause havoc on the planet.

The consequence of the escape is that Boris finds a time travel device which enables him to change history so it is Jones that is killed and Boris is able develop his plan to conquer earth. Finding that his partner is dead long ago understandably unsettles Will Smith who attempts to seek answers from his boss Emma Thompson. He works out what has happened and also goes back in time to the point just before the death of his father and the capture of Boris by Jones. Jones has also returned knowing that that this time he has to kill Boris and prevent the alternative reality from developing. For the change in history to work the two must work independently of each other.

In this they are both successful but Will learns the truth about the death of his father and how Jones wiped his memory of the event and then raised him as his son out of the debt of gratitude he felt for the boy’s father. As with the first two Men in Black films there are various creatures extraordinaire from other planets about which the majority of the population are oblivious and several good actions sequence with the film a tongue in cheek approach yet with emotionally charged moments. It is good fun but I enjoyed Spider man more.

　

　

　

　

　

The Amazing Spider Man 2012

Now for two adventure films, with the first like OZ a prequel to the Spider Man films, the Amazing Spider Man 2012. Against all expectations I thoroughly enjoyed this film which sets out to explain how and why Peter Parker became Spider Man

Peter grew up with his uncle, the excellent actor Martin Sheen and his wife after his parents have been killed in a plane crash. He had been taken to stay with the relatives after the family home had been ransacked because his father had been working on how to combine human and animal DNA as a way of curing major illnesses, in a throw back idea to Oh Lucky Man perhaps?

Peter who is a bullied weakling at school and then High school, has no chance with the girl he fancies, the daughter of a senior policeman but then discovers a secret diary of his father in which he has noted down his major discovery, a formula which solves the problem of combining the DNA in such a way to achieve the objective. He finds that the man with whom his father collaborated is now in charge of a successful major research corporation and he finds a way to gain entry posing as an Intern where he meets up with the police chief’s daughter who has a part time job at the company’s HQ laboratory..

Without realising what is involved Peter finds the project where the former partner has been pressurised to bringing forward the research which involves spiders. Peter is bitten by a processed spider at the wrong (or right) time and his body is transformed with the ability to move like a spider and with a dramatic increase in physical power. Unfortunately Peter then shares the secret formula with the partner whose boss pressurises him to use the project on humans not knowing about what has happened to Peter and when the partner refuses he is fired.

The partner then uses the formula on himself to regenerate a previously severed limb however this is only the first stage to a transformation into a human attacking giant lizard with ideas which threaten the whole of humanity.

Meanwhile at High School Peter has found it difficult to control his strength and athletic abilities but does begin to date the police chiefs daughter, eventually reveals that he is also Spider man. At first Peter uses his power to prevent a crime but on realising his potential he commence to help the police who condemn his involvement as a vigilante and he becomes their target. Refusing to give up the work he creates the second skin disguise familiar to everyone as Spiderman and also how to create and use super strength thread into the ability to create webs and links enabling him to move through the city at great speed,

The situation comes to a head when first the lizard creature creates havoc on a bridge but Peter saves the son of a tower crane driver as their car is about to topple off the bridge, a crucial development when later other crane men help Peter to move across the city to prevent catastrophe. This is after Peter has been captured by the police and the chief discovers that this is the boyfriend of the daughter. He lets Peter escape after learning that the daughter is in great danger and that Peter may be able to save her. Peter is able to stop the humanity threatening disaster with the help of the police chief who losses his life but makes Peter swear he will have no further contact with his daughter. This breaks both hearts and eventually girl visits demanding to know why she has been rejected and then correctly guessing that he has been persuaded by her father not to have contact. Peter agrees to the request because he failed to prevent the death of his aunt and understands that he will have to live alone to continue his at times dangerous activities.

Returning to High School Peter reveals to the girl that he is a failure at keeping promises and meanwhile in a prison cell a shadowy figure asks the former partner if he has revealed to Peter the truth about the boy’s father. The reply is no thus heralding the next film!

　

　

　

　

　

Peace, love and misunderstanding

I looked forward to watching Peace Love and Misunderstanding which starred Jane Fonda as the former hippie, commune living, free love mother who refused to change her approach to life and relationships as she grows old .

Because of this lifestyle her daughter Diane has cut herself off from her mother who has had no contact with her now teenage grand children. When Diane who works as a lawyer in Manhattan learns that her husband wants a divorce after finding someone else she is devastated and decides to turn to her mother who continues to live her lifestyle at Woodstock with a group of former hippie friends.

The teen age vegetarian peace loving daughter is attracted to a young man who turns out to be butcher while the teenage son films and records their lives to make a film about the nature of present USA society and the world and those who believe and try to live differently. Diane also grows close to a man who works with hands as a carpenter and is also a singer until she learns that the man was one of her mothers many lovers.

As the film progresses Jane celebrates a pagan rite with her women friends which at first only alienates the daughter more reminding of all the situations when she was faced with different men in their home as she grew up and the ideas of her mother which was determined to protect her children from. The film has a good feeling ending with mother and daughter reconciled the grand daughter appreciating the positive aspects of the young man and the brother winning with his film entry and the daughter also re-establishing relationship with the older singer carpenter. Life of course is not like this and I remained unclear what was the purpose of the film which overall disappointed. However I enjoyed ther performance of the now elder Jane Fonda, such a long way from Barbarella!

Elles

I was unexpectedly impressed by Elles starring Juliette Binoche and this is my film of the recent month of film experiencing. The film is directed and co written by the Polish Malgorzata Szumowska. Juliette plays a journalist in Paris undertaking research for an article on female student prostitutes. The two students who agree to be interviewed are nothing like what she expects and finds that they fearless, unashamed and in control. Instead of she having an effect on the young women they have a profound effect on and the relationship with her husband and two sons with everything coming to a head at a dinner party for her husband’s boss his wife and another colleague.

Juliette is disturbed by all she learns, not just the response of two girls to having sex with strangers, usually old enough to be their fathers if not older, but she learns of the men who talk openly about their lives, their work and usually their wives and families. This brings home that the men are ordinary leading ordinary lives look usually trying to recapturing the sexual excitement of their youth no longer satisfied by domestic sex. However there are dangers to as one of the girls is beaten up by a client.

Their experience has the effect on getting Juliette to reflect on her own sexuality and which in turn has a disturbing impact on her husband and their relationship becomes threatened. The film is more than a dramatised documentary and I thought revealed many insights about adult relationships in general. The two young women student prostitutes also gave first rate performances as did her husband and the two sons.

Oz the great and the powerful

I took someone to see Oz the Great and Powerful, in 3 D who had never seen the medium before at the 02 Millennium Dome,

We were both impressed by the story as well as the production. The Wizard of Oz is not just one of the important films of my childhood but in the final years of her life my mother enjoyed seeing the film together with Return to Oz and a programme the making of the film and its history on video tape at the home where she was resident.

The film is set 20 years before the Wizard of OZ and also commenced in a black and white prologue in which we come to know of Oscar Diggs who works in Kansas as a magician always on the run from the husbands and parents of women he flirts with as well as angry crowds when he is unable to fulfil promises of magic. He has to escape in a hot air balloon which like the subsequent story, is sucked up into a tornado and finds himself in the land OZ.

Here he becomes embroiled in a battle between two sisters the Good and the Wicked Witches. The films has all the ingredients of the Wizard of Oz with Munchkins, flying baboons, a poppy field which sends anyone entering into sleep and various other characters. The colouring and visuals are both gorgeous and stunning.

The core of the film is how Diggs uses his skills as magician to create a projected holographic image of himself after he is believed dead in order to defeat the wicked witches and regain the Emerald city, and free the Munchkins from domination. Thus he becomes the Wizard of Oz choosing to stay in the land with the Good Witch rather than return to earth. The films includes the use of a Scarecrow, the Cowardly Lion and Tin Man plus references to the original stories and subsequent films. I though it was engaging and not overlong, a criticism made by Dr Mark Kermode, The story ended in such a way that a sequel is possible,

Four Brothers

I had seen Four Brothers before 27^th March 2013 but only remembered this after the film commenced having watched because of the inclusion of Blue Blood’s detective Mark Wahlberg who I had not realised had become such an established film actor before inclusion in the series about the New York Police Department.

A woman appears to have been randomly killed as a witness to a robbery at a local convenience store and this brings home the four brothers, former adolescents in trouble adopted by the woman who managed an open house of local waifs and strays. The four track down the two men who carried out what emerges to have been a deliberate killing. They execute the killers without learning who paid them.

Attention focuses on one of the four when it is found that he used previously unknown to the others life insurance money to pay off a local villain.. He explains that because the three others had left he had been responsible for the foster mother’s bills and that he used some of the insurance money to payoff the gangster who was holding up work by his construction company.

The bothers are then attacked by mobsters with one of the four killed but one of the assassins reveals the identity of villain and it is discovered that the mother filed a police report about the way the villain was operating, a report which disappeared because the policeman involved was in the pay of the mobster.

More by accident than design they manage to unmask the rogue policeman who is gunned down by other force members. They then plan the execution of the mobster. The surviving brothers face a hard time in custody but despite beatings are not broken and released they return and repair the badly damage home of their adopted mother and return to live together with their women folk in the family house in honour off the woman and their murdered brother. A class B movie which we now call TV movie.