A James Bond who takes his orders not from M but from Him? The Man from Rome is an action thriller with an ecclesiastical twist set in photogenic Italy and Spain. Interesting, even if, by the end things have bogged down so badly that there’s the distinct impression of presentee-ism. Things are still happening on screen but it’s as if spiritually everyone involved has pulled the old office trick of leaving their coat on the back of their chair and slipped away for a beer.
Richard Armitage plays Quart, James Quart. No, we don’t learn his first name. Father Quart is a special operative working for the Vatican’s Institute of External Affairs, a Catholic MI6 equivalent.
In an exciting preamble that’s actually the best bit of the film, a hacker breaks into the Vatican’s servers and, despite all the dog-collared techies’ best efforts, gets to the personal computer of the pontiff himself, where he leaves a cryptic spytastic message about a crumbling ancient church in Seville where there’s been a number of deaths. And there will be more, the message suggests, if Rome does not intercede.
Quart gets his mission: go to Spain, investigate and head off a scandal. But before he goes he’s given a special dispensation – a licence to kill, in effect – which means he can James Bond about while way, if necessary. We’ve already glimpsed a fetching title sequence in which Quart in silhouette posed combatively with a gun against a roiling red background. Oh oh heavens.
Arturo Perez Reverte is Spain’s biggest selling author and writes intelligent thrillers full of arcane plots and exotic characters. He’s very adaptable, you’d have thought, and yet so often films based on his books don’t work. Even Roman Polanski, no slouch as a director, struggled with Reverte’s The Ninth Gate in 1999, though it was pretty to look at and worth watching if what you want from a movie is a warm bath.
That’s initially what you get here. Lovely locations in Rome and Seville, handsome guys with lots of hair, villains who are obvious villains, plus a couple of good-looking women who are age-appropriate for a middle-aged though buff priest on a mission and with a special dispensation.
Quart’s mission advances. A bank wants to buy the church and redevelop it. But the wife of one of the bank’s high-ups has a controlling interest in the building and doesn’t want to give it up. It’s just one of several bones of contention between a couple who’d be divorced if she were less Catholic. She is, however, divorced enough to take advantage of Quart’s special dispensation.
There is no love-making on screen, so we don’t discover whether Quart is more of a Pint or even a Half (look, I didn’t choose his name). We do discover, or are reminded again, of Armitage’s static quality when it comes to the acting thing. An advantage in some situations but not the action thriller, and certainly not one that’s as full of inaction as this.
A team of eight writers adapted the novel. From the evidence their work seems to have consisted of compiling lists of clichés they wanted to get in rather than working out how they could streamline the plot while retaining its flavour. Losing a few characters would have tightened things up a lot. And a few of the plot clichés might also have been sent packing. Did you know, for instance, that the Catholic church has a history when it comes to sexual abuse? And financial chicanery? You did.
Is it terrible? No, but it is torpid, or relaxed to the point of irrelevance. I liked the cast. Amaia Salamanca as the haughty duchess Quart is going to have to take to bed at some point. Alicia Borrachero as the dungareed nun in charge of restoring the crumbling church. Fionnula Flanagan as haughty duchess’s mother and potential Bond Villain of the piece. And Rodolfo Sancho as the stubbly banker (and husband of the duchess) whose nefarious plan to redevelop the crumbling church never feels like enough to justify all the hoo-hah.
Franco Nero does little more than cameo as the Pope, Carlos Cuevas is a likeable milquetoast right hand man to Quart and the likes of Paul Guilfoyle, Carlos Cuevas, Will Geen, Paul Freeman and Féodor Atkine pull various Euro-shapes as monsignors, archbishops and cardinals of varying degrees of probity, though they all come across as shady as hell. Nice work. If only everyone involved had more to get their teeth into.
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© Steve Morrissey 2023
