SPOILERS. This is an action/spy drama that strictly middle of the road. The acting isn't too bad, nor is it too good. The direction is efficient, but no more than that. The script is imaginative but not too much so. You get the picture.
Lambert is an intense actor, what with his crossed eyes and desperate features. It's difficult to believe him when he projects happiness with his family of Israeli operatives or, later, with his wife and child. The group seems finally to have dispatched their chief opposite number who will stop at nothing to demolish the Peace Process in the Middle East. He has, however, engineered a tricky escape and begins one by one to pick off the Israelis. Lambert is convinced that it is actually he, the chief baddy, but no one else wants to believe him and he operates on his own, Dirty Harry style. The baddy, by the way, is hard to miss, sort of beefy and evil looking until after his plastic surgery. (And he still looks suspicious to me!) The car of one of the Israelis is forced off the road by the baddy. I always wondered how that was possible. We've all witnessed the scene dozens of times, cars banging into one another at high speed until one goes over a cliff. And it seems to work every time. When this car takes its necessary nose dive onto the rocks at cliff bottom, of course it is not only wrecked but explodes in a fireball. (Not the only fireball in the movie.) That strikes me as a victory of the special effects people over the director and scriptwriters. Anyone who wants to see how the stunt should be believably pulled off, watch John Huston's "Mackintosh Man."
And the movie leaves no doubt about who the good guys and bad guys are. It plumps on the side of the Israelis from beginning to end. Not that the chief baddy isn't given his chance, though. At the climax, Lambert holds a pistol in his face and says, "Enough is enough. We have killed the members of your family and you have killed my family. Enough killing." Does the bad guy nevertheless raise his pistol in an attempt to dispose of his worst enemy? Or does he throw his weapon down and walk away peacefully? Guess. Earlier there is even the Palestinian equivalent of the "good German" in those 1950s war movies who recognizes the futility of all this violence and cooperates with the proper authorities. Both sides kill women, but the Israelis do so only in self defense, and the woman is a complete stranger. The bad guy strangles a stunning blonde whom we've gotten to know and who definitely should not have been snuffed, and he murders her in cold blood.
In sum: Nothing much new here. If it comes on late at night and you can't sleep, well -- give it a shot.
Lambert is an intense actor, what with his crossed eyes and desperate features. It's difficult to believe him when he projects happiness with his family of Israeli operatives or, later, with his wife and child. The group seems finally to have dispatched their chief opposite number who will stop at nothing to demolish the Peace Process in the Middle East. He has, however, engineered a tricky escape and begins one by one to pick off the Israelis. Lambert is convinced that it is actually he, the chief baddy, but no one else wants to believe him and he operates on his own, Dirty Harry style. The baddy, by the way, is hard to miss, sort of beefy and evil looking until after his plastic surgery. (And he still looks suspicious to me!) The car of one of the Israelis is forced off the road by the baddy. I always wondered how that was possible. We've all witnessed the scene dozens of times, cars banging into one another at high speed until one goes over a cliff. And it seems to work every time. When this car takes its necessary nose dive onto the rocks at cliff bottom, of course it is not only wrecked but explodes in a fireball. (Not the only fireball in the movie.) That strikes me as a victory of the special effects people over the director and scriptwriters. Anyone who wants to see how the stunt should be believably pulled off, watch John Huston's "Mackintosh Man."
And the movie leaves no doubt about who the good guys and bad guys are. It plumps on the side of the Israelis from beginning to end. Not that the chief baddy isn't given his chance, though. At the climax, Lambert holds a pistol in his face and says, "Enough is enough. We have killed the members of your family and you have killed my family. Enough killing." Does the bad guy nevertheless raise his pistol in an attempt to dispose of his worst enemy? Or does he throw his weapon down and walk away peacefully? Guess. Earlier there is even the Palestinian equivalent of the "good German" in those 1950s war movies who recognizes the futility of all this violence and cooperates with the proper authorities. Both sides kill women, but the Israelis do so only in self defense, and the woman is a complete stranger. The bad guy strangles a stunning blonde whom we've gotten to know and who definitely should not have been snuffed, and he murders her in cold blood.
In sum: Nothing much new here. If it comes on late at night and you can't sleep, well -- give it a shot.