Midnight in Saint Petersburg
1996 film by Douglas Jackson

Midnight in Saint Petersburg is a 1996 made-for-television thriller film starring Michael Caine for the fifth and final time as British secret agent Harry Palmer.
It served as a sequel to Bullet to Beijing, which had been released the year before, the two films having been shot back-to-back. Three previous films featuring Caine as Palmer were released in the 1960s, beginning with The Ipcress File.
Plot
Harry Palmer heads a private investigation business based in Moscow. His associates are Nikolai "Nick" Petrov, ex-CIA agent Craig, and ex-KGB Colonel Gradsky.). They take on the job of finding 1000 grams of weapons-grade plutonium stolen from the Russian government, though they do not know the identity of their client.
This leads Harry back to Saint Petersburg, where (in Bullet to Beijing) he managed to make enemies of both of the leading rival gangsters, Alex and Yuri. Nonetheless, suspecting that Alex is involved, Harry talks Yuri into helping him.
As a complication, Nick's ballerina girlfriend Tatiana is kidnapped by a gang working for Alex in order to pressure her father, the head curator of the Hermitage Museum, into helping steal valuable artwork for crooked art dealer Dr. Vestry.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Midnight in Saint Petersburg” is 1996 film by Douglas Jackson. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Midnight, Saint and Petersburg, not as a finished interpretation.
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The phrase “1996 film by Douglas Jackson” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
Attribution, date and provenance are strongest when supported by the original work, a catalogue record and documented transmission. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 3, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q3421861. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1996 and 1000.
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This entry incorporates text from “Midnight in Saint Petersburg” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.