My suspicions that the 1990s were the worst decade for film are confirmed with this absolutely atrocious travelogue-cum-thriller which wastes the talents of rising star Russell Crowe in an painfully awful piece of predictable filmmaking. Writer/director Frank A. Cappello is the guy responsible for this monstrosity and I don't know what he was thinking, because as a coherent film it's awful.
The movie opens with future starlet Kelly Hu dispatching a room of bland bad guys before Crowe, playing a wisecracking cop, gets involved. His job takes him to Japan and back again while he has to contend with a kidnapping (that doesn't seem to phase him too much) and gets saddled with a stewardess (Helen Slater) who might well be the worst supporting female role ever put in a film. It's not just that Slater is terrible (although she is), but her character is even more irritating than Erika Eleniak's in UNDER SIEGE, and that's saying something.
Despite the relative shortness of the running time, the plot meanders along with one cringe-inducing gag after another. The action sequences, despite reoccurring at regular intervals, are terribly handled and watch out for the excruciating bit of FX work when a helicopter crashes. The film increasingly tries your patience as it progresses so that by the end I was half sleep, barely aware of the credits rolling; never a good sign!
The movie opens with future starlet Kelly Hu dispatching a room of bland bad guys before Crowe, playing a wisecracking cop, gets involved. His job takes him to Japan and back again while he has to contend with a kidnapping (that doesn't seem to phase him too much) and gets saddled with a stewardess (Helen Slater) who might well be the worst supporting female role ever put in a film. It's not just that Slater is terrible (although she is), but her character is even more irritating than Erika Eleniak's in UNDER SIEGE, and that's saying something.
Despite the relative shortness of the running time, the plot meanders along with one cringe-inducing gag after another. The action sequences, despite reoccurring at regular intervals, are terribly handled and watch out for the excruciating bit of FX work when a helicopter crashes. The film increasingly tries your patience as it progresses so that by the end I was half sleep, barely aware of the credits rolling; never a good sign!