No need to go on at any length about this marvelous example of a routine political/action B-movie thriller.
"Die Hard" was a great success in 1988. It had Bruce Willis, alone, crawling through ventilation shafts and sliding down elevator cables to rescue a dozen hostages from a gang of thieves. This is a flawed imitation. Instead of the Nakatomi Building, it's the American Embassy in Bucharest, and instead of Willis it's Weller. I couldn't bring myself to any appreciation of the production designers notion of the American Embassy in Bucharest. No, I couldn't, because I was once a guest at the American Embassy in Rumania. Not in real life but in a TV miniseries -- the inimitable and unforgettable "Rage of Angels", or was it "Windmills of the Gods"? I forget.
The whole enterprise looks hastily cobbled together, using every cliché in the manual. There are the criss-crossing laser beams preventing access to the thermonuclear bomb about to explode in the basement. There is the son of the protagonist, a scared twelve-year old kid with a pistol to his temple. There is the steely eyed villain who snaps out orders or nods and who never smiles or blinks. They screwed up one minor cliché. The read-out on the atomic bomb is ticking down the seconds to detonation, as usual, but the numbers are white instead of the usual customary read.
It's a whirling collage of improbabilities from top to bottom. Even the acting is below par for the professionals in the principal roles. Both Darryl Hannah and Peter Weller are better suited to light comedies or family movies. But I admire Peter Weller, for the same reason I have to admire anyone who can make a dent in completely independent career fields.
Weller is a trumpeter who plays occasionally in a band, sometimes with Jeff Goldblum. He has a BA in theater and an MA and PhD in Italian Renaissance Art and Roman history and has taught at Syracuse University. He speaks fluent Italian.
So what if he's not Lawerence Olivier? Can Olivier blow "Scrapple From the Apple"? I doubt it.
"Die Hard" was a great success in 1988. It had Bruce Willis, alone, crawling through ventilation shafts and sliding down elevator cables to rescue a dozen hostages from a gang of thieves. This is a flawed imitation. Instead of the Nakatomi Building, it's the American Embassy in Bucharest, and instead of Willis it's Weller. I couldn't bring myself to any appreciation of the production designers notion of the American Embassy in Bucharest. No, I couldn't, because I was once a guest at the American Embassy in Rumania. Not in real life but in a TV miniseries -- the inimitable and unforgettable "Rage of Angels", or was it "Windmills of the Gods"? I forget.
The whole enterprise looks hastily cobbled together, using every cliché in the manual. There are the criss-crossing laser beams preventing access to the thermonuclear bomb about to explode in the basement. There is the son of the protagonist, a scared twelve-year old kid with a pistol to his temple. There is the steely eyed villain who snaps out orders or nods and who never smiles or blinks. They screwed up one minor cliché. The read-out on the atomic bomb is ticking down the seconds to detonation, as usual, but the numbers are white instead of the usual customary read.
It's a whirling collage of improbabilities from top to bottom. Even the acting is below par for the professionals in the principal roles. Both Darryl Hannah and Peter Weller are better suited to light comedies or family movies. But I admire Peter Weller, for the same reason I have to admire anyone who can make a dent in completely independent career fields.
Weller is a trumpeter who plays occasionally in a band, sometimes with Jeff Goldblum. He has a BA in theater and an MA and PhD in Italian Renaissance Art and Roman history and has taught at Syracuse University. He speaks fluent Italian.
So what if he's not Lawerence Olivier? Can Olivier blow "Scrapple From the Apple"? I doubt it.