A Paramount picture written by Jonathan Hensleigh and Wesley Strick, directed by Phillip Noyce. Rated PG-13, contains violence, profanity. The '60s British series starred Roger Moore as a dashing, glib, amusing, suave, urbane thief who was a sort of a Robin Hood, helping out those who had been robbed or swindled. The show was based on a series of books by Leslie Charteris, first published in 1928, later turned into a series of films in the 1930s as well as a radio show in the '30s and '40s. Set mostly in a Moscow that's in political turmoil and freezing from lack of heat during a very cold winter, the plot revolves around the attempts by a charismatic political leader to gain control of a prototype formula for cold fusion to create energy.
Cold fusion is the opposite of nuclear fission, without that messy radioactivity afterwards.
On screen, it's also pretty silly. Shue is there to provide the movie's love interest and to give the somber Kilmer a human side. But although Emma might be a wizard in the lab, there's very little chemistry between her and Kilmer's Simon Templar. When the Russians finally wrest the fusion formula from her, they put a top scientist to work on it, but he can't make heads or tails of her scribblings. Later, when it gets down to the wire for the formula to succeed, Emma promises that if she can just find a quiet room for a couple of hours, she can rearrange her notes and come up with the winning equation.