Spoonatects Am i the only one who thinks........Average?

Forumrxes Yo, there's no way for me to review this film without saying, take your *insert ethnicity + "ass" here* to see this film,like now. You have to see it in order to know what you're really messing with.

StyleSk8r At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

Frances Chung Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

Leofwine_draca My suspicions that the 1990s were the worst decade for film are confirmed with this absolutely atrocious travelogue-cum-thriller which wastes the talents of rising star Russell Crowe in an painfully awful piece of predictable filmmaking. Writer/director Frank A. Cappello is the guy responsible for this monstrosity and I don't know what he was thinking, because as a coherent film it's awful.The movie opens with future starlet Kelly Hu dispatching a room of bland bad guys before Crowe, playing a wisecracking cop, gets involved. His job takes him to Japan and back again while he has to contend with a kidnapping (that doesn't seem to phase him too much) and gets saddled with a stewardess (Helen Slater) who might well be the worst supporting female role ever put in a film. It's not just that Slater is terrible (although she is), but her character is even more irritating than Erika Eleniak's in UNDER SIEGE, and that's saying something.Despite the relative shortness of the running time, the plot meanders along with one cringe-inducing gag after another. The action sequences, despite reoccurring at regular intervals, are terribly handled and watch out for the excruciating bit of FX work when a helicopter crashes. The film increasingly tries your patience as it progresses so that by the end I was half sleep, barely aware of the credits rolling; never a good sign!

TxMike The one thing positive to take away from watching this movie is that Russell Crowe has always been a good actor, even before he was known widely. This movie came out the same year as "The Quick and the Dead" where he played a reformed gunslinger forced into a gunfight tournament.Russell Crowe is FBI Agent Zack Grant and the movie begins with the botched assignment to have an new agent drop a listening device into a suspect's apartment, but things go terribly wrong. So Zack needs to redeem himself by finding the person responsible.Zack finds that the agent had made several calls to Etsushi Toyokawa as Yuji Kobayashi and assumes he was the bad guy responsible, so he sets out to arrest him and bring him back. Very shaky assumption.On the flight back to L.A. a critical role is filled by Helen Slater (of early "Supergirl" fame) as Mary, a rookie flight attendant who tries hard to get along with Zack but doesn't quite get there.There could be a summary of the story but I am going to skip that. This movie is barely as good as its IMDb rating of "5". The dialog is very poor most of the time, and the characters are directed to do some very stupid things, often, to advance the plot. Just one example, Zack at one point has chased down Yuji in the desert after an escape, and as Zack begins to mumble something steps in front of Yuji in perfect position for Yuji to overpower him, which he does. No FBI agent in his right mind would have done that. There actually is a second positive thing to take away from watching this movie. I have no doubt the script writer and the director tried their best to make this a fine movie, so it just serves to illustrate how difficult the job is. When we see a fine movie with an interesting script and superb acting we tend to take it for granted, but few movie-makers have that skill.

CKCSWHFFAN I believe the only reason anyone would have seen this film is because Russell is in it.That was my reason.Russell does well in his role.Love his hair cut in this one.A better script was needed.But, we have to keep in mind, this was not a big budget film.Helen's character Mary could GET on the audience's nerves as well, even though she was a good person & meant well.You could tell why she got on Zack's nerves.Course, she has not done much in her career. When you consider the best thing she ever did was her guest spot on "Seinfeld".By the book, not really exciting action scenes.To be seen only if you are a fan of Russell's.

tfar2000 This movie is a technical Mess. The opening scene shows the villain holding a modern fragmentation grenade and two minutes later it turns into a WWII vintage "Pineapple". They must have shot these two scenes months apart and obviously they lost the original prop. The doctor doing the autopsy pulls a "slug" from the body and states, "Another shell is found in the lower spine". That would be the first time a bullet "casing" ever caused a mortal wound. How did they use for a technical consultant on this movie, some 22 year old Vassar graduate?