Whilst other films have run amok, trying to make the mundane and generally
boring world of surveillance, bugging and phone tapping glamorous, here we have
a credible balance.The use of, supposedly, satellite imagery made for a good shot but the device
was over done too often. Everyone has been aware that spy satellites can see
the news headlines of the paper the man is reading in Red Square for at least
the last decade; this didn't shock anyone, indeed, it disrupted the
flow completely in places.
Without these interruptions, and the rather stupid, unbelievable, suggestion of
3-D rendition from an in-store security camera; I'd have certainly rated the
film higher than I have.
That said; the plot was almost entirely convincing.
In fact there were two plots, although it wasn't obvious at the start, which
congealed nicely for a climatic ending to an action packed film. It's nice to
see a list of stuntmen at the end of a film that's longer than the list of
digital effects technicians.
Robert Clayton Dean is a successful Washington lawyer whose life is suddenly
turned upside-down after he unwittingly, and unknowingly, becomes the
recipient of a video recording of a murder.
With the National Security Agency behind the murder; things have to be tidied
up and Dean is soon their targeted man.
Dean is on the run, with only an ex-girlfriend and an unknown surveillance man
to help him out.
Will Dean win in the end ? Of course he will; but, for once, this wasn't the
focal point of the film.
Getting there, then winning, was what this film was about.
And it got there, and completed itself, in spectacular fashion.
Other reviewers have concentrated their praises on the satellite footage
of the dramatic roof top chase; forget that, it's nothing compared to the
bicycle chase.
Yes, really; a bicycle chase.
