QUICKSAND. Overseas FilmGroup, 2003. Michael Keaton , Michael Caine, Judith Godreche, Rade Serbedzija. Director; John Mackenzie.

   Even though I’m a big Michael Caine fan, I’d not heard of this movie until I spotted it on Amazon Prime Video this past weekend. That’s what having only a direct-to-video release will do to a movie, no matter who’s in it.

   Not that Michael Caine has much of a role in it, but even so, it’s quite an enjoyable one, mixing the world of high finance with, what else, money laundering, this time through a film company that’s supposedly making a movie in the south of France. Michael Caine plays an on-the-skids movie star who’s there only as figure head to keep legitimate money coming in.

   Michael Keaton plays the hard-nosed by-the-book head accountant back in the States when flags come up, suggesting something has gone wrong. Ad indeed it has. Once on the ground and investigating, he’s finds himself the victim of a frame-up, that of killing the head of the Nice police force.

   Assisting him is the company’s CFO, played by Judith Godreche, whom I’ve never seen in a movie before, but who reminded me of a young French Julia Roberts. If I can I’ll see if I can’t watch her some of the other moviees she’s made.

   Michael Keaton does OK in his role of our hero on the run, and if pressed, I’d say better than OK. His character seems to have resources you would not think a nerdish business-orieted kind of guy would have, given that he started the movie being portrayed as exactly that. Sometimes, though, characters are forced to grow in ability and what they can do when they have to, right before our eyes, and we the viewers fall for the gambit every time.

   It is difficult to make such a movie as this and not make it fun to watch, and that is precisely what happens here. They don’t make a lot of movies like this any more, or if and when they do, how does one ever find out about them?