For That Kind of Money…

The Holcroft Covenant (1985) – The adult children of three Nazi officers are confronted with a trust fund of billions of dollars. There are multiple opinions, including using the money to return the Nazi movement to power. The trust was created in death, and may end that way as well.

Directed by John Frankenheimer

Starring Michael Caine, Victoria Tennant, Lilli Palmer, Michael Lonsdale

Why I Liked It: It’s a decent enough “Nazis trying to rise from the ashes” movie.

In the decades following World War II, Hollywood moved from stories about heroically defeating Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan to stories about dying Nazis trying to restore the Third Reich. There is the usual mix of some great movies (“Marathon Man”) and lots of middle of the road ones (like this one), plus the usual mix of exploitation films (“Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS.” No, I’m not kidding). The Nazis-rising-from-the-ashes-of-history all use a common concept. In the dying days of the war, a group of Nazis amass a fortune and hide it to support their future return. Years go by, the leaders die off and something has to be done. There’s usually some innocent person sucked into the plot who realizes the evilness of it all. They will fight and eventually defeat the Nazis in the end.

Here Michael Caine plays Noel Holcroft, the son of a Nazi officer. Holcroft the younger, rejects everything about his father, growing angry at the mention of his name. Thus, he is less than pleased when he’s contacted about a mysterious trust fund left for him and two other Nazi descendants. The original intent is to use the money to repair the damages of the war. Unsurprisingly, there are a lot of people who want a piece of the billion dollar fund. There are mysterious deaths and a woman who may or may not be Noel’s friend. Sounds like all the makings of a solid addition to the genre.

Eh, not so much.

There was enough to keep my attention, but there’s also a lot of “Wait, what?” in the movie as well. Based on a Robert Ludlum novel, the story appears to suffer from the editing process of a 500+ page novel down to a just under two-hour movie. Holcroft spends a lot of the movie wandering from revelation to revelation without ever uncovering anything on his own. Director Frankenheimer manages to sew enough together out it all to keep me watching. By the end, I was both bemused and amused by it all.

Call it a bottom of the spectrum three star movie. Got a rainy/snowy afternoon with nothing to do? This could be the mental popcorn movie you need.

Rating – *** Worth A Look

If only the movie was as thrilling as this trailer, lol!