Forgotten Classic Movie Review: The Saint, an American spy adventure from 1997!

In 1928, the writer Leslie Charteris created "The Saint", a story about a catholic spy named Simon Templar, who save the world by pretending to work for the bad guys but in the end he defeat them or turn them to the police. In the 1960s a famous tv series starring Roger Moore made the character popular even though the character borrowed a lot from James Bond, and then later the Simon Templar actor became a James Bond actor.

In 1997, Paramount Pictures released a blockbuster movie of "The Saint" starring Val Kilmer, and the movie did a good profit with $169 million. However in the year later,  the movie has become forgotten, and even to this day, critics were very harsh on the movie, gave it only 2/5 and rotten tomatoes gave it totally 29%, the question is what happened? Was it too little action? Or was it not a "The Saint" ?

Story:

As a young boy, Simon escaped from a harsh Catholic Church, he change his name to Simon Templar. 20 years later, Simon Templar (Val Kilmer) has become the ultimate cat burglar, by disguising himself to different characters with a name from a saint, he can be untraceable by the police. His talent is caught by Ivan Trejiak (Rade Serbedzjia) who is a former communist party and alliance with the mafia, and perhaps soon to be the next Russian president, he hires Simon to steal a formula plans to install a machine called "Cold Fushion", a heat machine that can save his people and also make him popular that his political enemies will be dethroned. Simon agrees with the job and travel to England to steal the plans from a female professor named Dr Emma Russell (Elisabeth Shue). But after he seduce Emma, something happens inside Simon, he falls in love with her, and decide to decline the job. Mr Trejiak however doesn't accept the answer and send his Mafia after them, the Mafia is lead by Trejiaks son Ilya (Valery Nikolaev). Can Simon save the woman he's inlove with and at the same time save Mother Russia from Trejiaks tyranny?

Roger Moores Simon Templar:

​As many would have guessed, the Val Kilmers "Simon Templar" is only loosely based on the real "The Saint" Story, and the fans of the character claims that the Roger Moores "Simon Templar" is more near the story. In the Roger Moore series, Simon doesn't disguise himself to different characters, nor is he a common thief who is running from the police, and his childhood background is not a run away from Catholic Church, and he is cooperating with the police, so it's understandable the fans were confused after watching this late 90s version, specially when later in the film "The Saint Theme" from The Roger Moore series were played during a chase scene, and at the ending the audience can hear Roger Moores voice as a radio voice over, so of course it was difficult to know if it was or wasn't the same Simon Templar Character.

Overall:

I can see why it got forgotten, specially for the Roger Moore fans, and also all in all, the disguises are kinda poorly and ridiculous specially when it's not hiding Val Kilmer face that well, the only time they actually manage to make a great disguise was when Simon disguised as Ivan Trejiak once, it looked almost the same. And when it comes to the action drama, this movie had kinda a little to offer, as there were many styles as we have seen before in other movies. But does it make it a bad movie? No absolutely not, forgotten maybe, but not bad, it's a great movie as a entertainment, one feel in good mood watching and also Roger Moores The Saint was also an entertainment series and mostly a James Bond copycat, while this The Saint Movie tried something new and kept the entertainment on high level.

I reward The Saint with 7.0/10!