Kojak: the Belarus File

Telly Savalas returns to the role that made him a household name in the 1970s for this bowdlerisation of John Loftus's spy novel The Belarus Secret. While he sucks his lollipops and cracks his trademark one-liners with practised ease, Kojak somehow seems the wrong person to go on the trail of a murderer who is bumping off Russian survivors of a Nazi concentration camp. Max von Sydow and Suzanne Pleshette soldier on with material that is quite clearly beneath them, receiving little help from the ponderous direction of the usually dependable Robert Markowitz.