The Saint is a 1997 American action thriller film directed by Phillip Noyce, written by Jonathan Hensleigh and Wesley Strick, and starring Val Kilmer in the title role, with Elisabeth Shue and Rade Šerbedžija. The plot of the film revolves around the title character who is a high-tech thief and master of disguise, who becomes the anti-hero while using the moniker of various saints. He paradoxically lives in the underworld of international industrial theft and espionage. The film was a modest financial success with a worldwide box office of $169.4 million, rentals of $28.2 million, and continuous DVD sales. It is loosely based on the character of Simon Templar created by Leslie Charteris in 1928 for a series of books published as "The Saint", which ran until 1983. The Saint character has also featured in a series of Hollywood films made between 1938 and 1954, a 1940s radio series starring Vincent Price (and others) as Templar, a popular British television series of the 1960s starring Roger Moore, and a 1970s series starring Ian Ogilvy.
Plot At the Saint Ignatius Orphanage, a rebellious boy named John Rossi refers to himself as "Simon Templar" and leads fellow orphans in an attempt to run away. He tries to bid farewell to a girl named Agnes with a kiss, but they are caught and she accidentally falls from a balcony to her death. As an adult, Simon—now a professional thief dubbed "The Saint" for using Catholic saints as aliases—steals a microchip from a Russian oil company. Simon stages the burglary during a political rally for the company's owner Ivan Tretiak, a billionaire oligarch and former Communist Party boss rallying support against Russian president Karpov. Simon is caught by Tretiak's son Ilya but escapes with the microchip, and is hired by Tretiak to steal a revolutionary cold fusion formula discovered by Emma Russell, an American electrochemist working at Oxford; Tretiak plans to use Emma's formula for clean, inexpensive energy to monopolize the energy market during a severe oil shortage in Russia, but Tretiak secretly plans to murder Simon for stealing his microchip. Using the alias "Thomas More", Simon poses as a Boer traveller to seduce Emma, and steals the formula, but when Simon develops romantic feelings for her, he decides to give up on stealing the formula, and when Tretiak threatens to kidnap her, Simon finally steals the formula after a one-night stand. Tretiak realizes the formula is incomplete and sends Ilya and his henchmen to kill Simon, who narrowly escapes. Simon returns to Russia to demand his payment from Tretiak while disguised as Tretiak himself. With all the money obtained from Tretiak, Simon achieves his goal of obtaining $50,550,000 and retires from the robbery trade. A heartbroken Emma reports the theft of her formula to Inspectors Teal and Rabineau of Scotland Yard, who inform her Simon is a wanted international thief. Emma tracks down Simon to a Moscow hotel where Tretiak has them arrested, but they escape and flee through the suburbs. They are sheltered by a prostitute and her family and meet Frankie, a spiv who sells them directions through the sewers to the U.S. embassy. Finding Ilya and his men waiting for them, Simon lets himself be caught to allow Emma to safely reach the embassy, then escapes after igniting a car's gas tank and leaving Ilya severely burned. Planting a listening device in Tretiak's office, Simon learns he plans to sell the incomplete formula to Karpov and frame him for wasting billions on useless technology, then use the political fallout to install himself as president. Emma finishes the formula, which Simon delivers to Tretiak's well-meaning physicist Dr. Lev Botvin, who builds an apparatus that proves the formula works. Simon infiltrates the Kremlin and informs Karpov of Tretiak's conspiracy, but they are captured by Tretiak loyalists. At a massive gathering in Red Square, Tretiak makes his accusations against Karpov, but Botvin's cold fusion reactor is successfully initiated, exposing Tretiak as a fraud. He and Ilya are arrested, and revealed to have caused the heating-oil shortage by stockpiling vast amounts of oil underneath their mansion. Reuniting with Emma, Simon returns her formula and they start a secret relationship. She presents her formula to the world at a news conference, which Simon attends in disguise and escapes Teal and Rabineau when they spot him in the crowd. Driving away, he hears a news broadcast that $3 billion was donated to the Red Cross, Salvation Army, and the United Nations Children's Fund; it is implied that Simon, who had access to Tretiak's accounts, gave the money anonymously and established a non-profit foundation led by Dr. Botvin to develop the cold-fusion technology.
Cast
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