Docteur Justice (1975)

One of the problems faced by the makers of Jame Bond cash ins is that even when they have the budget for foreign locations, the most exotic ones have inevitably already featured prominently in a genuine Bond movie.  By 1975 and nine official Bond pictures there weren't many places left that 007 hadn't visited, which is perhaps why the makers of Docteur Justice (1975) decided to set the first half of their film in Belgium -Antwerp, Ostend and Bruges all feature prominently and remain locations in which the real James Bond still hasn't killed or sexually harassed anyone.  But, to be fair, Docteur Justice isn't quite your regular Bond knock off.  For one thing, the title character isn't a two fisted secret agent, but rather a two fisted roving World Health Organisation (WHO) doctor who also happens to be swimming champion and an expert in karate.  Moreover, rather than being sent on a specific assignment, he stumbles into a plot to rob oil tankers of their cargoes mid-ocean purely by chance, when he tries to help a fellow passenger who has been shot as they both depart a flight at Ostend.  Dr Justice, (yes, that's his actual name), is in Belgium to attend a WHO conference in Bruges, most specifically to debate with rival Dr Georges Orwell over solutions for world over population.  His arrival coincides with that of an oil tanker in Antwerp, where it is found that its tanks are full of sea water rather than oil.  The captain and crew, having no explanation, naturally come under suspicion and are arrested.  (The captain's suspicions really should have been aroused by the fact that the ship's cook, who left the ship before the discovery of the theft, was none other than Gert Frobe).  The man shot in Ostend was a member of the gang behind the theft who had tried to demand a larger share of the loot, executed as an example to anyone else tempted to try and double cross them.

The gang, of course, is led by Gert Frobe as 'Mr Max', although he defers to the unseen 'Regent' for important decisions and planning issues.  Having witnessed Dr Justice speaking to the dying man in Ostend, Max fears that the dead man might have revealed details of their next job to the medic.  Ordering Justice's capture, obviously, proves the wrong move, as it involves the good doctor in the plot, of which he actually knew nothing.  After various twists, including a gang member, seemingly undeterred by that execution, trying to extort more money from Max in exchange for Justice, who has captured, said gang member's girl friend changing sides after witnessing his murder by Max and a trip to Colombia, (actually Spain) followed by a trip on another tanker, during which the gang's modus operandi is revealed, it all culminates at the Spanish castle headquarters of the Regent.  While Docteur Justice would seem to be packing a lot of plot and incident into just over an hour and forty minutes of running time, the fact is that it still feels too long.  The most obvious problem is that the direction of Christian-Jacque, a director who tended to specialise in swashbucklers and action films, (The Black Tulip (1964) and The Saint Lies in Wait (1966), being two of his best known titles), and latterly action-oriented TV series, is here seriously off the pace.  The action sequences, while well choreographed, not only seem to be over in a flurry, but are widely spaced out, with far too much talk in between them.  One action scene, though, stands out as it seemed to be an attempt to do something Bond has never done: a land yacht chase down a beach.

Moreover, unlike an actual Bond movie, the film fails to exploit its locations to any good effect.  OK, I know that Belgium, especially Bruges, might not seem the most exciting place in the world, but I'm sure that if it had featured in a Bond movie then the makers would have used various recognisable locations to good effect in action sequences.  Only the section with Justice as a passenger on the second tanker, (where Frobe is once again the cook), makes anything of its location, providing some insight into the operations of merchant ships in the seventies.  The plot, while set up interestingly, with the mystery of how the oil was stolen from the tanker en voyage, apparently without the crew knowing, unfortunately resolves itself in pretty pedestrian fashion.  Indeed, the secret of the robbery is telegraphed early on when it is pointed out to an oil company agent travelling on the first tanker that it is twenty four hours late on arrival, yet he doesn't seem to have noticed this fact and has no explanation.  So it comes as no surprise when the gang prepares to rob the second ship that Max the cook has drugged the crew's food as they near a particular point in the voyage, with an hallucinogen which will leave them with no memory of the incident.  Of course, Dr Justice has anticipated this and has an antidote which the dead gangster's ex-girlfriend (who has hidden on the ship) administers to him so that he can foil the plot.  The whole robbery sequence is curiously pedestrian, with lots of expositional dialogue between Max and his cohorts, just to be sure that we all understand what is going on, building up to a pretty minimalist intervention by Dr Justice to put a spanner in the works.

At this point the whole plot hinges on the fact that the Regent just happens to have discovered the existence of huge underwater fuel tanks, supposedly built by the Germans to secretly refuel their U-boats during the war, at this particular spot near the Azores, into which the oil from the tankers can be transferred.  At this point the mechanics of the plan become obscure - presumably they'd have to have a tanker or tankers of their own to transfer the oil into at a later date, in order to sell it.  In which case, why didn't they simply do so directly, while the crews were drugged, rather than relying on these underwater tanks?  Something else glossed over is that fact that the crew's missing twenty four hours would have been noticed at the time - a ship's captain has to account for everything in the ship's log, this would include the fact that the delay by the oil hijackers would mean that the ship would have been out of its expected position according to its charted course.  Anyway, leaving all this aside, you might well ask just why the gang was hijacking oil cargoes in the first place, (other than for the money itself)?  Well, it is all in order to finance the Regent's masterplan to cut overpopulation by releasing a chemical into the world's water supplies which will render a large proportion of the male population sterile.  Because, of course, the Regent is really Dr Orwell, thereby neatly bringing everything full circle by tying the plot in with Dr Justice's original reason for being in Bruges.  Oh, not to forget that Orwell is Max's older brother, the fact that both characters are played by Frobe made both this and the Regent's identity all too obvious.

Actually, the best thing in the film is Frobe, who, particularly as Max, gives a typically charismatic and quirky performance.  Despite his villainy, Max is a far more interesting and likeable character than Dr Justice, who, as played by John Phillip Law, comes across as a cardboard cut-out.  Which, perhaps, isn't surprising, as the film is based on a French comic strip.  So, to be fair to Law, his performance is, arguably, pretty much in line with his character's origins and he does everything expected of a comic strip hero - he looks handsome, has a dazzling smile and is supremely confident at all times.  Moreover, he typically looks good in the action sequences, having already played a number of similar roles, (although, interestingly, one of the producers of 1973's Golden Voyage of Sinbad, in which Law starred, claimed that the actor actually wasn't that athletic and was a poor fencer).  The supporting cast includes a number of familiar faces, including Nathalie Delon as the girl who switches allegiances and Paul Naschy as one of Max's henchmen.  Despite its plot problems and poor pacing, taken on the level of a comic strip adaptation, Docteur Justice is actually quite enjoyable and, if the performances of the leads is any indication, does seem to have been intended to be taken somewhat tongue-in-cheek, a parody of these sorts of overblown action films.  I don't think that the film has ever officially been released in an English language version, either dubbed or sub-titled, explaining its relative obscurity in the English-speaking world.  (The version I saw had English sub-titles added by a third party).