The Fourth Protocol – 1987 | 119 mins | Thriller | Colour

Plot Synopsis

The Fourth Protocol is an absorbing and highly watchable Cold War spy thriller scripted by Frederick Forsyth from his own novel. The respectable cast includes Michael Caine, Ned Beatty, Joanna Cassidy, Ian Richardson and a pre-Bond Pierce Brosnan. Director John Mackenzie had already proved himself a dab hand at sinister thrillers with his earlier film The Long Good Friday (1980).

It’s the Cold War and renegade KGB officer Major Valeri Petrofsky (Pierce Brosnan) is sent to a US Air Force base in East Anglia to assemble an atomic weapon which, when detonated, will heap blame on the Americans and destabilise NATO. The charming, yet utterly ruthless Petrofsky arrives in England and sets up home near the airbase. He’s greeted by fellow agent Irina Vassilievna (Joanna Cassidy), who assembles the smuggled nuclear device yet becomes a victim of Petrofsky’s necessity for ultimate security. Petrofsky’s counterpart is the unorthodox MI6 agent John Preston (Michael Caine), who is aware that evidence suggests the components for a nuclear device are being smuggled into the country but nonetheless is playing catch-up to the Russians movements. Despite being taken off the case by his superior, Harcourt-Smith (Julian Glover), Preston is given the green light to pursue Petrofsky by Sir Irvine (Ian Richardson). An increasingly fraught race against time commences to discover the bomb before detonation.