A rare Swedish outing (albeit filmed in English) for the late Dennis Hopper during his European wanderings – after cleaning up his act but before being welcomed back into the Hollywood mainstream; this is your typical, talky, moderately exciting and occasionally incoherent Cold War chase thriller that were the order of the day during the course of that turbulent period in world history. Although top-billed, Hopper's enigmatic U.S. diplomat character plays second fiddle to his co-stars Hardy Kruger (as a duplicitous businessman scientist) and Gosta Ekman (as the Police Inspector investigating the theft of Kruger's new-fangled submarine-tracking device).
Even so, the real protagonist – the title role of a dishonorably discharged naval officer/ex–boxing champ who is engaged by the authorities as Kruger's chauffeur to keep an eye on him – is played by a relative Scandinavian newcomer, Cory Molder. Being a newbie at the spy game, Molder more often than not fumbles his job (and, consequently, gets beaten up pretty badly by Hopper's own inside man) and eventually blows his cover and is sacked
but this does not stop him from romancing two women at a time (his real girlfriend and Kruger's secretary).
The doubly ironical ending – the stolen device turns out to be a fraud and the departing Molder will ostensibly be bumped off like his predecessor – is predictable enough but manages to end the fairly busy narrative on a decently satisfying note.
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