Johnny Gallagher, a sergeant, is sent from Germany with a prisoner. The prisoner escapes from the men's room at National Airport and Hackman begins his search for his man. Enlisting the help of his ex-wife and various old friends, he finds that the prisoner is part of a plot by senior military personnel on both sides to kill a very high-ranking world figure in order to sabotage arms control talks. An Army sergeant stationed in Germany is tasked with bringing a corporal to the US for court martial. But after they arrive, the sergeant is attacked and the man he is responsible for escapes. He then asks his ex-wife who is an intelligence officer to help find him. He goes to see the man's wife and discovers that the man he was escorting is not her husband. So he asks his ex to help him find out who the man he was with actually is. The sergeant is later confined to the base. Later, when one of his ex's people is killed and fearing that she's in danger, the sergeant gets away and saves her just as some people are trying to kill her. The sergeant and his ex learn that something is happening in Chicago, so they go there and the sergeant asks a cop he knows to help him. It turns out that disarmament talks are taking place in Chicago. Convoluted conspiracy thriller, in the tradition of "Day of the Jackal": it focuses too much on its plot and not enough on its characters. A couple of well-done action sequences occasionally inject some life into the picture, but it never becomes fully involving - and leads to a quick, anticlimactic ending which doesn't reward us for our patience. Johnny Gallagher is sent from Germany with a prisoner. The prisoner escapes from the men's room at National Airport and Hackman begins his search for his man.<br/><br/>Enlisting the help of his ex-wife and various old friends, he finds that the prisoner is part of a plot by senior military personnel on both sides.<br/><br/>Their aim is to kill a very high-ranking world figure in order to sabotage arms control talks….<br/><br/>For a film directed by a seasoned action auteur, and staring behemoths like Hackman and Jones, the film is really boring and mundane in places.<br/><br/>Made in a time when film makers thought that audiences would be enthralled by stuffy men in rooms talking a lot, a lot of the cast are wasted, and the action scenes are just a montage of men with moustaches chasing Hackman and co.<br/><br/>Hackman and Jones are great though, and when they share the screen, the film blisters in entertainment, but it isn't long enough.<br/><br/>The last ten minutes are interesting and Davis does an amazing job of the climax, but we have to trawl through a mundane set up before the end.<br/><br/>A waste.
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346 weeks ago