Review of The Package

As the cold war starts to thaw the leaders of the United States and the Soviet Union are on the brink of signing an historic treaty that will lead to the scrapping of their nuclear arsenals… not everybody wants this to happen though; certain members of the military on both sides are determined to scupper the treaty. To this end Sgt. Gallagher is tasked with escorting prisoner Walter Henke from West Berlin to the US; to him it is a routine if somewhat tedious task but it soon becomes clear that it is anything but routine. His prisoner is helped to escape at the airport and when Gallagher goes to see the man's wife he learns that he wasn't Walter Henke! He goes to see his ex-wife, an army colonel, to see if she can help him get to the bottom of it; she and her assistant manage to find out that the man's real name is Thomas Boyette and he has a military record linking him to a series of war zones. Gallagher soon finds himself framed for the murder of Henke's wife so must go on the run with his ex. They follow the trail to Chicago where they meet up with policeman Lt. Milan Delich, an old friend of Gallagher's. As they get closer to Boyette they get in increasing danger as the conspirators are determined to stop them preventing Boyette from carrying out his mission.

This is a solid cold war thriller made when relationships between east and west were improving but nobody suspected that the Soviet Union would shortly cease to exist. Gene Hackman does a good job as Sgt. Gallagher and Tommy Lee Jones is fine as Boyette. The story is a bit far-fetched but if you can suspend your disbelief it is fairly gripping. There is a sense of paranoia as Gallagher has very few people he can trust and many of those who aren't actually bad think he is! There isn't a huge amount of over the top action but what there is, is fairly exciting and fairly believable. If you enjoy thrillers that have some mystery but aren't too convoluted you should enjoy this.