Reviews

Potentially a good story, but ruined by lack of realism.... And the wooden acting, not to say miserable (by Lori Loughlin, whose strenuous efforts to create tension, destroys whatever's left ... The soppy love business...

Oh, Heavens.... I'm sorry I wasted my time with this movie (though I skipped bits, because they were so predictable.

The movie is essentially a bit of every Hollywood cliché you can imagine, man in wilderness pursued by bad guys who killed his wife... Man is cop, he was in LA (so, yes, you have the mean urbans versus pure rurals here, the wet dream of the likes of Sarah Palin)... The musical score underlining the bits that the stiff acting simply can't carry is abominable, and sooo predictable: Man drives truck = country music, Man being despondent and self-pitying = slow and mournful violins, etc.... Avoidable to the max. There is the entire beginning is a set-up for the end. Boy plays with slingshot.... you know he's going to use it to save dad. You just know it, because it is so inorganic.

Half a star for the audience that can make it through this bilge.

Pure nonsense. A waste of time, energy and money. Besides the film being predictable from the first frame, it is also unrealistic, embarrassingly juvenile, and highly racist, a piece of anti-Arab propaganda whose only redeeming factor is to remind us that the anti-Arab thing is deeply embedded in our so-called culture. The plot makes no sense, the Great SEALs are depicted like a bunch of frat boys, the journalist is not a journalist, not a self-respecting one at any rate, she is what Hollywood thinks journalists are like, or the way it would like to think of journalists.... Hollywood, oh when will you ever come up with an original idea?

National obsessions often come out in film, and the problem is that they also become the focus of the plot. Here we have the American love affair with the 50s and 60s, the old cars, the old drugstores, and, yes, the dirty underbelly of that glorious and gloriously hypocritical society. The other obsession, of course is Kennedy's assassination and ultimately, in the movie, it is bound to play a pivotal role. So while watching the movie, one does have the definite feeling of déjà vue all over again, this movie has been made before, but I can't put my finger on it.

And yet, in spite of the clichés, and the jagged timeline, the flashbacking, the bouncing back and forth, the story does emerge slowly but surely, the characters define themselves as the frames move through the machine, and it all becomes quite compelling. The acting also leaves something to be desired, but when it is not stiff, with lines delivered like a sandqich at the deli counter, it becomes quite natural. The "modern" characters are not nearly as good as the 60s characters...

Boylan, I found, was perhaps the most memorable figure, a central figure as well. Because his character leaves us in doubt as to his persona. He is not pure white, he is an eavesdropper, a bit of a control freak, he could go either way for a while. That is perhaps the problem with some of the less savory figures, who are archetypically bad. Having the two *foreign baddies" was not the greatest idea....

Given fewer clichés, a more organized plot, and smoother directing, this could have been a very nice yarn.... Given the budget, though, well done.