Mission to Caracas (1965)

Weak, 18 June 2015

Mission to Caracas is the story of a briefcase containing (a) plans to manufacture a deadly nerve gas and (b) one million dollars in diamonds. Actually, it's the story of the cruise ship murder of the man carrying the aforementioned briefcase. Who did it and where is the case? That's exactly what agent Gil Becker (Rod Carter) intends to discover.

I'm not sure why the movie is called Mission to Caracas (or more precisely, Mission spéciale à Caracas). Once the cruise ship sets sail at about the 15 minute mark, Caracas is a distant memory for the rest of the film's runtime.

Mission to Caracas is nowhere near to being the best Eurospy movie I've seen. It's closer to the bottom of the list. In fact, I'm not even sure you can really call this a "spy" movie (Euro or not). It's more like a bad mystery with some poorly done fight scenes. But the biggest problem I have with the movie is that it never makes a real attempt to let the viewer know the characters. If you don't know them, it's hard to care about them. Our hero, Gil Becker (Rod Carter), is the definition of nondescript. His lack of screen presence make it difficult to root for him. Head bad guy, Boris (Christian Kerville), is just the same. In fact, I'm not sure I even knew his name until the movie was almost over. Finally, Mission to Caracas features a gaggle of 8 or 9 poorly characterized women. Even though I recognized a couple of the actresses (Jany Clair and Janine Reynaud), I don't think I ever figured out any of their names. There's a giant fight scene with all the women and I'll be damned if I knew who was fighting who. It all seemed so random.

Throw in some poorly done music, a lack of suspense, and some lame attempts at comedy and you've got a bad movie. Overall, a generous 3/10 is the best I can do.

3/10