It can't be easy being Treat Williams. Or Bill Paxton. Or Geoff Daniels, for that matter. They're all accomplished actors, and yet they rarely get the roles they deserve because they just lack that indefinable quality that separates the megastars from the journeymen. Consequently, they lose roles to actors who are not as accomplished as they are. How frustrating must that be, I wonder?
Williams plays John MacDonald here, a businessman who ignores his government's advice to deal direct with a shady Arab property developer, and winds up a virtual prisoner with no guarantees for his safety once the job is completed. This is a cable TV production, and its pretty good. The pace is leisurely, and it works well because it enables us to experience the slow realisation of MacDonald that, firstly he is being cheated by his Arab clients, then that his chances of full payment are slim, and finally that his life is in danger.
The final scenes, in which MacDonald is hidden in a small cargo box on an airport runway in temperatures exceeding 100 degrees are suitably tense, and well-paced by director Simon Wincer who does well to avoid sensationalising the story. Only the sheik with whom MacDonald locks horns comes across as unconvincing, fulfilling that hoary old cliché about the oil-rich sheik who likes nothing more than sampling males and puffing on his hubble-bubble pipe.
Williams plays John MacDonald here, a businessman who ignores his government's advice to deal direct with a shady Arab property developer, and winds up a virtual prisoner with no guarantees for his safety once the job is completed. This is a cable TV production, and its pretty good. The pace is leisurely, and it works well because it enables us to experience the slow realisation of MacDonald that, firstly he is being cheated by his Arab clients, then that his chances of full payment are slim, and finally that his life is in danger.
The final scenes, in which MacDonald is hidden in a small cargo box on an airport runway in temperatures exceeding 100 degrees are suitably tense, and well-paced by director Simon Wincer who does well to avoid sensationalising the story. Only the sheik with whom MacDonald locks horns comes across as unconvincing, fulfilling that hoary old cliché about the oil-rich sheik who likes nothing more than sampling males and puffing on his hubble-bubble pipe.