Age Will Wither

Masquerade. "I miss the war," groans British Agent Jack Hawkins. "I can't spot the bad guys any more." Masquerade, following the current movie and TV vogue for mixing suspense with comedy, only heightens Hawkins' dilemma: the good guys and bad guys all play like clowns. The trend becomes alarmingly literal when Hero Cliff Robertson is set upon by foes (or are they friends?) midway through a Spanish circus. Robertson is dunked in water, hit with a cream pie, tossed into a fall-apart car and carried away in a cage.

When not overworking for laughs, Robertson underplays for keeps as a Yank soldier of fortune hired by Hawkins to guard a kidnaped Middle Eastern prince. The downy potentate must survive until his 14th birthday, when he will come of age and renew Britain's oil concessions. Double, triple and quadruple crosses keep the lad shuffling from beach house to crumbling castle to other photogenic spots along Spain's Mediterranean coast. Pursuing him, Robertson encounters such perils as a loose-living bareback rider (Marisa Mell) and a white-crested vulture. He rides inside a tank-truck aslosh with vin ordinaire, ends his Cliff-hanging with stunts on a fallen footbridge.

Easy to sit through, Masquerade is even easier to see through: it is meticulously rigged to resemble a James Bond epic. But where timing is all for 007, Masquerade lets an outrageous escape occur an instant too soon or too late to be really funny. When a preposterous situation requires a saving touch of wit, the witticisms are too often stillborn. Hawkins, who abhors violence, resists one invitation to fisticuffs with the mumbled aside: "We're both too old for this sort of thing." It may be nearer the truth that this sort of thing is beginning to show its age.

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