Publisher's Synopsis
Five classic movies starring Michael Caine. In 'Educating Rita' (1983), working-class hairdresser Rita (Julie Walters) enrols in an adult education course in literature at her local university, determined to expand her mind. She is assigned alcoholic lecturer Dr. Frank Bryant (Caine) and, as Rita's horizons broaden, she begins to feel stifled by her home life. Simultaneously, Frank's academic career takes a turn for the worse as his drinking increases. In 'The Fourth Protocol' (1987), when Soviet spy Valeri Petrofsky (Pierce Brosnan) is charged with bringing about the demise of NATO, he decides his best bet is to detonate an American nuclear bomb at a British air base. The only man who can stand in his way is veteran counter-espionage expert John Preston (Caine), but he must fight the opposition of his bosses before they agree to take the threat seriously. In 'The Eagle Has Landed' (1976), a group of Nazi soldiers parachute into Norfolk during World War II and infiltrate a small village near the holiday retreat of Winston Churchill. Their plan is to assassinate the British Prime Minister. But the villagers are not without initiative and, as their plans get protracted, they find themselves facing moral and practical dilemmas. In 'The Ipcress File' (1965), Caine plays cockney secret service man Harry Palmer in the first of a trilogy of 1960s spy capers. Here Harry tracks down a missing scientist, only to discover that one of his own superiors is a double agent. Finally, in 'Without a Clue' (1988), Victorian society is thrilled by the crime-solving adventures of the great Sherlock Holmes, unaware that he is in fact a fictional character created by the real sleuth - Dr Watson (Ben Kingsley) - as a cover for his own detecting abilities. When Scotland Yard request that Holmes help them with their latest, baffling case, Watson is forced to provide him, in the form of weak, drunken actor Reginald Kincaid (Caine).
