Reviews

It's very noisy. Mel is constantly out of breath because he's being shot at and has to run or climb or fall. Goldie squeals and shrieks because she has done something stupid, or sees something nasty about to happen. There are chases galore....on foot, by car, on a motorbike, in a plane, in a pickup. Bullets by the million fly through the air, but only a few hit Mel, making him grimace. Funny?? Don't make me laugh! If you're over 12 years old, this is not the film for you.

I didn't realize that there were so many feeble-minded people wandering around out there, and just fancy....they're all gathered together in one small town in Ohio (?). A series of unpleasant vignettes, the only point of which seems to be to make the viewer cringe in disgust. Thanks, but no second helpings for me.

A friend warned me about this film. "It's not very good" she said. What she should have said was "It's not very good, and it goes on for a long time, and Richard Gere can't change the expression on his face, and there are scenes where you say "doesn't that remind you of....?". There's not much point in discussing details, but some useful tips are revealed. (1) How do you escape from a high security prison hospital? Ans: You walk out with the visitors when they leave. (2) How do you steal/retrieve a heavy dumbbell being carried in a shopping bag by a villainess? Ans: You put her on a tram in San Francisco, with the bag dangling out, and you get in a tram going in the opposite direction, so that as the two trams pass, you just reach out and grab!! So simple. There are better ways of spending 2+ hours than watching this.

Sorry folks, but can this film really be (one of) the greatest of all time? Entertaining? Yes. Well acted? Err...yes. 'Life affirming'? No way. Realistic? Don't make me laugh.

Twenty years or so pass in this film. Does anybody get any older? Apart from the occasional pair of specs, that's it. Not an extra wrinkle to be seen. What happened to the make-up department?

People get beaten to within an inch of their lives. One death and one wheelchair case, but otherwise just a couple of bruises which disappear rapidly.

The 'baddies' get their just deserts and we're all supposed to shout 'serve them right' (as we say in England). The 'goodies' live happily ever after, but we knew that would happen within the first ten minutes. The people who think this is a great film probably think Stephen King is a great author. Competent and popular...yes. Great...no!! P.S. Who replaced the poster after...? Was that an oak tree? Maybe leaves are a different shape in America.

I looked for other user comments to see if others thought the same as I did about this film. Nobody had written a comment!!(in 5+ years). Am I the only person to have seen this film, or just the only one to see it all the way through. Risible and cliched....you've seen all these characters before, a hundred times. Middle aged go-it-alone tough detective Jack is very stressed. You can tell by the way he shouts at his superiors, and the way he chain smokes, holding the cigarette between his thumb and first finger. He is divorced, and has fallen behind with his maintenance payments. He seems to be suspiciously over-affectionate towards his daughter. The plot is not worth attempting to describe, but there are parts of the story which make you think "did I doze off and miss something?" After his daughter is killed early in the film, Jack is committed to a hospital/mental home for a short period. His grief is noticed by an attractive twenty something,(Lydia), who just happens to be visiting her wheelchair bound grandmother. Within days, Lydia is cooking Jack a gourmet meal (at night, in the hospital!), and showing affection for the distraught cop. There is a brief appearance of a stereotyped psychologist/psychiatrist who has not had a haircut since the 70's. More love interest is provided by a magazine reporter, who happens to live next door to Jack, and is trying to advance her career by getting the lowdown on why Jack shot an 'unarmed' teenager (who was only pulling a knife from his jeans, not a gun!). Jack's colleagues start meeting violent deaths. Is Jack really the man responsible? One of his kitchen knives is missing, so the sergeant is suspicious. Several other red herrings swim into view before all is revealed. The one big plus about this film was that it did offer surprises in the plot, even though most of them were absurd. 3 stars out of 10.