Deadly Game

Academy Award winner Caine adds to his résumé with this suspenseful debut. When a metal box containing weapons-grade uranium is discovered at a dump in Stepney, England, the race is on among various London gangs to get their hands on it. Afraid of the havoc a briefcase-size nuke could wreak, New Scotland Yard assigns Harry Taylor, a 45-year-old, Kipling-quoting old-school DCI, to retrieve the material. Alongside right-hand man John Williams, sniper Iris Davies, and nuclear expert Carol Walker, Harry follows a trail of clues that takes his team from the posh Eaton Square digs of a Sondheim-loving drug lord to the Versailles-like lair of a Russian oligarch in Barbados. Along the way, Caine orchestrates plenty of shoot-outs, ambushes, and pulse-quickening standoffs. He doesn’t reinvent the wheel, but he brings to the proceedings a Len Deightonesque delight in depicting interservice squabbling, an Ian Fleming–like appreciation for outsized villains, a fascination with atomic age minutiae, and tough-guy dialogue that absolutely crackles. This is the kind of well-oiled thriller that Caine made his name starring in. (Dec.)