American Roulette

A depressingly botched political thriller from Hatton and producer Verity Lambert. Andy Garcia - who'd committed to the script just before his Untouchables breakthrough - is Carlos, an implausible South American poet in London. He is also a president in exile, and a target for assassination, though how and why this came to be remains a mystery for a good while. Hatton seems to be angling for an old-fashioned romantic intrigue, with chummy British secret agents, the odd suspense set-piece, and bumbling Soviet spies for comic relief. What he gets is a wayward, muddled mess.