In his younger years it would be fair to say that Michael Caine was typecast as a rough-and-ready Cockney. Whether that was agent Harry Palmer in _The Ipcress File_ or the efficacious Charlie Croker in _The Italian Job_, Caine became Britain's greatest self parody of a bygone era. In _Alfie_, Caine plays the eponymous character, a womanising lad-about-town who cares more about with who he'll be sleeping with than where he'll be sleeping that evening. The ladies - and there are more than a few - are often discarded as, literal, objects of desire, but as Alfie comes to learn, actions will even...