When Eight Bells Toll

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R C Great adaptation of Alistair McLean's novel, Anthony Hopkins does his best as a fledgling action star and is pretty good in it. Robert Morley brings his usual gruff favourite uncle act, and Jack Hawkins even though he lost his voice from throat cancer is still a commanding presence. The story is that gold bullion ships are going missing in the Scottish isles and Hopkins and company....Corin Redgrave as his cheerful partner investigate. Excellent photography of the Scottish scenery, great action sequences especially involving a helicopter. The score by Angela Morley is superb. Follows McLean's novel very well. Overall a must see! Rated 5/5 Stars •  Rated 5 out of 5 stars 04/12/25 Full Review nick s A no thrills James Bond. Anthony Hopkins was a fine actor but this wasn't a very good vehicle for him. It would have been better if the writer/director wasn't trying to hit all the bond beats. But if you pretend it wasn't imitation then the movie is fairly entertaining. Rated 3.5/5 Stars •  Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars 08/28/24 Full Review Audience Member Anthony Hopkins stars in one of his earliest flicks. This one falls in line with the old James Bond movies. Secret agent Philip Calvert is a navy officer hired by the British government. His latest mission is to track down gold bullion smugglers involving sunken ships. Sir Anthony Skouras is the one in charge in Greece. With Calvert assigned to monitor him on the Scottish coast are his findings legit? Skouras is a respected member of society among the locals so he might not be able to touch him. Calvert also gets help from Charlotte, Skouras' wife who finds out about his shady business Calvert does his job breaking the rules not following orders but doing it well A good agent goes beyond the call of duty This is an above average spy flick for a great Thespian actor Rated 3.5/5 Stars •  Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars 03/10/24 Full Review Part_time_pirate I wish I could say that this movie is so bad that it is good but it is just plain miserably bad. Every character, every word of dialog, every scene...simply every single thing about this film needs to be taken 200miles from shore, weighted down with old scrap steel and deep sized from the face of the planet! Rated 1/5 Stars •  Rated 1 out of 5 stars 02/17/24 Full Review jon c Anthony Hopkins stars in one of his earliest flicks. This one falls in line with the old James Bond movies. Secret agent Philip Calvert is a navy officer hired by the British government. His latest mission is to track down gold bullion smugglers involving sunken ships. Sir Anthony Skouras is the one in charge in Greece. With Calvert assigned to monitor him on the Scottish coast are his findings legit? Skouras is a respected member of society among the locals so he might not be able to touch him. Calvert also gets help from Charlotte, Skouras' wife who finds out about his shady business Calvert does his job breaking the rules not following orders but doing it well A good agent goes beyond the call of duty This is an above average spy flick for a great Thespian actor Rated 3.5/5 Stars •  Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars 03/31/23 Full Review Audience Member British Treasury secret agent Phillip Calvert (Anthony Hopkins) is sent to investigate the hijacking of five cargo ships in the Irish Sea, tracking the latest hijacked ship-the Nantesville, carrying £8 million in gold bullion-to the Scottish Highlands and the sleepy port town of "Torbay" on the "Isle of Torbay". Posing as marine biologists, Calvert and his partner Hunslett (Corin Redgrave) find the local inhabitants suspicious and hostile. They suspect that Cypriot tycoon and shipping magnate Sir Anthony Skouras (Jack Hawkins), whose luxury yacht Shangri-La is anchored off the coast, may be behind the pirating of the gold bullion. While searching the surrounding area in a Royal Navy Helicopter, Calvert makes contact with a group of remote shark fishermen who appear more friendly than Torbay's locals. Calvert also meets the occupants of a Castle, Lord Kirkside and his teenage daughter, who behave strangely as well as being hostile... "When Eight Bells Toll" was made and released about five years after its source novel of the same name by Alistair MacLean was first published in 1966. This was MacLean's eleventh novel and this movie was the sixth film adaptation of one of MacLean's stories. This picture was planned as being the first of a series of spy movies featuring the character of Philip Calvert. Around this time, it was known that Sean Connery would not be doing another James Bond film after Diamonds Are Forever (1971) and there was speculation that the Bond franchise might end. As such, a potential vacuum was sensed by rival producer Elliott Kastner. But when this movie failed at the box-office, plans for a film franchise to succeed the James Bond movies were scrapped. This is obviously made in the wake of James Bond as said and this attempt to put British Treasury secret agent Phillip Calvert on the map as a competitor to Bond is a failure in many ways. First of all the character hardly sends sparks around him (even if Hopkins can act, but makes less sense as a secret agent), the story is pretty linear (loose ends that stay loose) with planted atypical British farcical add ons that doesn´t work at all, the action is along the line of "we can see that it´s a stuntman" and "When Eight Bells Toll" never becomes that exciting. This is just mediocre, uninteresting and forgettable. Hardly the best Alistair MacLean material nor movie adaptation. And you got to love the over the top movie poster that was made for the film which seems to belong to an entirely different film. Rated 2.5/5 Stars •  Rated 2.5 out of 5 stars 02/21/23 Full Review Read all reviews

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