Review of Company Business

A silly mix of political mayhem and two opposites forced together in an adventure that they are probably both too old for, this suffers from both a really dumb structure mixed with a horrid screenplay. The fantastic Gene Hackman hides his embarrassment and goes through with a serious portrayal as an alleged government agent assigned to get Mikhail Baryshnikov out of prison and across the German border, a job screwed up by double-cross, sending both men into hiding together and putting an embarrassing predicament on both the United States and Russia. This makes officials from both countries look like buffoons, think the Coyote and Elmer Fudd meet Boris and Natasha. They end up in Paris where all of a sudden we learn that Baryshnikov has a daughter, kidnapped in an attempt to get him to come out of hiding, resulting in a tense conclusion on the Eiffel Tower. While I didn't expect another Bond film, I certainly didn't expect Looney Tunes with a touch of genuine violence and sexuality either. Screenwriters of fluff like this expect us to buy whatever they try to sell us simply because we're naive about political intrigue, but they underestimate most of us who can recognize absurdity right off the bat. To top it off, there's really no conclusion which adds to the frustration of the 90 minutes you've just wasted.