The Shoes of the Fisherman (1968) review

Former Ukrainian Archbishop Kiril Pavlovich Lakota (Anthony Quinn) is freed from his twenty-year-imprisonment in a Siberian labor camp by the Premier of the Soviet Union (Sir Laurence Olivier) who put him there, he goes to the Vatican, is first made a Cardinal and then becomes the Pope, where he's given the task of trying to help out a starving China and prevent World War III - meanwhile, his friend Father Telemond (Oskar Werner) is having a crisis of faith and TV reporter George Faber (David Janssen) is cheating on his physician wife Ruth (Barbara Jefford).  Although it's fittingly austere with Quinn as the self-questioning and all-too-human pontiff - the sequence where he removes his papal attire, wanders the streets of Rome and helps Ruth with a patient is arguably its most interesting moment - this nearly three-hour epic does a mediocre job even attempting to tie together any of its pieces and meanders for the bulk of the time, and its supposed "dramatic moments," like meeting with Chairman Peng (Burt Kwouk) and Fr. Telemond having a fit (and dying), barely register.  Kiril's proclamation that he'll use the Vatican's riches to feed the hungry ends it on a preposterous note: the notoriously stingy Catholic Church keeps a close watch over every coin in its coffers.