Genre:
Mystery, Sci-fi, Thriller
Distributor:
Odeon Entertainment
DVD Release Date:
17th March 2014 (UK)
Rating: PG
Director:
Jack Gold
Cast:
Trevor Howard, Elliott Gould, Joseph Bova
Buy DVD: The Man In The Steel Mask [Amazon]
or Odeon Entertainment The Man in the Steel Mask is an early 70s paranoid thriller oddity. It came out the same year as The Long Goodbye; Elliot Gould starred in both and the films couldn’t be more different in quality, and the always-wonderful Trevor Howard co-stars as a Russian general.
A top American physicist attends a conference in East Germany but ends up in a suspicious car accident. He is forced to get re-construction surgery in East Germany and gets metal implants. The rest of the film is Elliot Gould’s US Agent trying to figure out if he is the real deal or a spy for the Germans.
The film has little to no suspense due to its flashbacks, which makes it quite apparent what his real identity is. It is horribly paced and drags at a short 90 minutes; it also lacks the paranoid edge seen in many thrillers of the 70s despite a perfectly fine performance by Elliot Gould who tries his best with such poor material. It’s not even so bad it’s good, or even just plain bad, it’s just an incredibly mediocre film. It sounds ok on paper with it being a fun paranoid cyborg thriller, but falls flat despite the two great actors Howard and Gould. The film is also known as Who?, or the more awesome Roboman, and one of the taglines was “The kill machine with the megaton mind” but sadly that wasn’t the case.
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