I started watching this without knowing any of the credits. As the dialog and the anfractuous plot developed I found myself thinking, "Oh, no!" It was all so MAMET-LIKE. I assumed that David Mamet had had sufficient critical successes and box office winners that other writers and directors were shamelessly ripping him off and that he would soon be nudged sideways into the cliché-laden zone now occupied by people like Hitchcock and Quentin Tarrantino. Istantly recognizable Schtick.
In a few years our ability to suspend disbelief would be lambasted with increasingly involved special ops within cons within special ops, and we would be listening in every movie to dialog like this: Character One: "I'm going to get you out of here." Character Two: "You're going to get me out of here?" Character One: "I'm going to get you out of here." Or: Character One: "You want a cigarette now?" Character Two: "Can you produce one?" What a relief to find that David Mamet was behind this whole thing -- writer, producer, director, bricoleur. It may be Schtick, but it's Mamet's own.
The plot really IS pretty complicated and sometimes a little hard to follow because of the elliptic dialog. At the same time we can usually judge from the circumstances what it means when somebody says, "You've got to bring me into the tall corn." It's a little harder to guess what a transponder looks like but we can do that too. It's very hard, though, to understand how even the world's finest shot can with one bullet blow away a moving target on land when the shooter himself is on a bobbing fishing boat half a mile out on the misty ocean -- but let that (and several other implausibilities) glide.
It's an interesting movie, easy to get swept up in. Val Kilmer is beyond the point of prettiness, happily, and is bulkier and more believable. (From some angles he reminds one of Mickey Rooney.) His acting may not shoot out the lights but the role doesn't call for fireworks, just a nicely balanced combination of determination and creativity.
I kind of like Bill Macy better in parts that are at least slightly comic. Those goofy features, I suppose. The rest of the performers are at least adequate.
The movie was released in 2004 and probably shot in 2003. The heavies -- aside from those in Washington -- are Arabs, as far as we know. I mean, when you think of Dubai, you think Arabs, no? Although I doubt that most Americans could go to a map and put their finger on Dubai instead of, say, Qattar, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, or Yemen -- or Jordan, Syria, or Saudi Arabia for that matter. A survey of high school students a few years ago revealed that the majority thought that Toronto was in Italy. I only mention this because I wonder if this film establishes precedent. Are we to have nothing but Arab terrorists and white slave traders in our future? Is this a pointed finger that I see before me? Catch it if you can. Plenty of action -- but it's used as dramatic punctuation rather than a Ding an Sich. It's there for a reason. And the narrative will keep you interested.
In a few years our ability to suspend disbelief would be lambasted with increasingly involved special ops within cons within special ops, and we would be listening in every movie to dialog like this: Character One: "I'm going to get you out of here." Character Two: "You're going to get me out of here?" Character One: "I'm going to get you out of here." Or: Character One: "You want a cigarette now?" Character Two: "Can you produce one?" What a relief to find that David Mamet was behind this whole thing -- writer, producer, director, bricoleur. It may be Schtick, but it's Mamet's own.
The plot really IS pretty complicated and sometimes a little hard to follow because of the elliptic dialog. At the same time we can usually judge from the circumstances what it means when somebody says, "You've got to bring me into the tall corn." It's a little harder to guess what a transponder looks like but we can do that too. It's very hard, though, to understand how even the world's finest shot can with one bullet blow away a moving target on land when the shooter himself is on a bobbing fishing boat half a mile out on the misty ocean -- but let that (and several other implausibilities) glide.
It's an interesting movie, easy to get swept up in. Val Kilmer is beyond the point of prettiness, happily, and is bulkier and more believable. (From some angles he reminds one of Mickey Rooney.) His acting may not shoot out the lights but the role doesn't call for fireworks, just a nicely balanced combination of determination and creativity.
I kind of like Bill Macy better in parts that are at least slightly comic. Those goofy features, I suppose. The rest of the performers are at least adequate.
The movie was released in 2004 and probably shot in 2003. The heavies -- aside from those in Washington -- are Arabs, as far as we know. I mean, when you think of Dubai, you think Arabs, no? Although I doubt that most Americans could go to a map and put their finger on Dubai instead of, say, Qattar, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, or Yemen -- or Jordan, Syria, or Saudi Arabia for that matter. A survey of high school students a few years ago revealed that the majority thought that Toronto was in Italy. I only mention this because I wonder if this film establishes precedent. Are we to have nothing but Arab terrorists and white slave traders in our future? Is this a pointed finger that I see before me? Catch it if you can. Plenty of action -- but it's used as dramatic punctuation rather than a Ding an Sich. It's there for a reason. And the narrative will keep you interested.