The Saint

Based on the Leslie Charteris novels by way of the '30s movies starring George Sanders, the Saint show featured a blithe Roger Moore as Simon Templar, a modern-day Robin Hood engaged in implausible, cheeky high jinks, righting wrongs and making a little larcenous profit on the side. In Philip Noyce's new version, Templar's levity is overwhelmed by technical bravura, a Vertigo-like backstory, Val Kilmer's exhausting histrionics, and a dour and lumpy plot about decadent neo-capitalism in Russia and a formula for cold fusion, the latter helped along by a miscast Elisabeth Shue as a brilliant scientist. But mostly this is an opportunity for Kilmer to ham it up in a variety of disguises and accents. At the Cheri, the Fresh Pond, and the Chestnut Hill and in the suburbs.

-- Peter Keough