Bullet to Beijing (1995)

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. 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…