Reviews

Great for peril, suspense and family values, but credibility is stretched beyond limits when a burning building is not too hot to touch and all its systems stay functioning! But who cares, very entertaining.

Not too bad for some fairly easy entertainment and intrigue - if you can tolerate the unnecessarily gratuitous violence and blood which at times is pretty sickening for me. But when the intrigue ends about half way through when the mystery is uncovered, the film degenerates into comedic posturing by a ridiculous number of body guards unnecessarily threatening a couple of defenceless men and a morally bankrupt story line which could so easily have raised the tenor of the film if it had included an ounce of humanity. The only attempt at this, with a contrived reconciliation which flew in the face of all normal sensibilities was promptly snuffed out along with the most of the robotic characters that behaved as though they were supposed to have been in a sci fi movie. Even the attempt at romance was more like a pair of the 'Wooden Tops' getting together. An ill conceived plot that started well but completely failed to deliver.

The film I saw was only about two hours including adverts so must have been cut from the three hours mentioned in the listing.

I think this movie is a good mix of mainly fictional plot, history, politics, relationships, romance, drama, some suspense and surprise, photography and special effects but one character that didn't work for me was the lead man who was too wooden and passive, yet could perform heroic feats throughout the movie including emerging unscathed and apparently totally unaffected from the most trying of situations!

Throughout the movie there are the usual unlikely circumstances, contrivances and coincidences in which our hero succeeds where common sense says he couldn't possibly do so.

I am by no means a James Bond expert but perhaps this could be seen in some ways as a poor example of a film with a lot of similarities in the format to James Bond films, as the best way to describe the genre perhaps. (A man on a mission, heroic exploits, political intrigue and a relationship with a girl!).

I really don't know what all the fuss from other reviewers is about! Well I do know what it is about...it's just not a big deal. Whoever expects a movie like this to be realistic? Just watch it for entertainment and don't analyse it too much! Yes it's all pretty corny but for me that just adds laughs to the entertainment value!

And extended entertainment value is added by the option to pick out the irregularities afterwards...all part of the fun! For me, the main one would be, how can such phenomenal geniuses come up with the most extraordinary solutions to problems because of their amazing ability to harness and process facts and information, only to rack up the suspense when their solution fails, due to them having overlooked a relatively straightforward factor that meant their plan could never have worked in the first place?! Oh of course, I forgot - if they'd got it right first time there would have been far less to keep us in suspense!

And could someone please explain to me, if a WiFi connection won't work from a fast moving plane to a stationary laptop, why would it work from the laptop in just as fast a moving car (yes, just as fast!) to another stationary computer??

AFTER WATCHING SECOND EPISODE: The fast moving problem solving and action continues most entertainingly, using the varied mix of interesting personalities in the team to effectively add variety, interest and more rounded humanity. But even more than that, this episode has also brought a whole new dimension by interweaving with the main narrative the personal lives of the team, bringing moving emotional input into a story which up until now we might have expected to be centred around heartless mechanical geeks! An unexpected but brilliant improvement to an already enjoyable format!

AND AFTER WATCHING THE THIRD EPISODE: I'm beginning to come round to some of the views of the more negative reviewers - the technical solutions apparently thought up by geniuses are very corny and unrealistic and the sitting down hacking into computers in no time at all while the clock is ticking down to the next disaster does get rather repetitive! The role of Paige Dineen (Katharine McPhee) does add much needed colour however with her personality and chemistry with Walter. It is fast moving and lot of the speech is very fast and poorly articulated so it is very difficult to pick up some of the details making it hard to follow the plot. Downrated to 6.

For some reason, when I saw this film, it was called 'Stolen Innocence'.

I found this a very watchable and an enjoyable film, very suitable for family viewing although it probably would not interest younger children, but I think the tag 'thriller' is misleading. From the beginning, each stage of the plot's development is easy to predict and the main part of the final outcome is pretty obvious from very early on. There are the usual coincidences and lucky breaks when in normal circumstances things would go quite differently, but this is pretty normal in detective type films or by and large the mysteries would never be solved! For me this did not really detract from the enjoyment, but if you are looking to be on the edge of your seat with suspense, you should look elsewhere! Finally a personal gripe: as usual with many films, some of the dialogue is lost occasionally when the diction is not clear; but what can you expect unless you want characters to speak less naturally (perhaps like newsreaders) - and I am British which doesn't help with an American film! This is no worse an issue with this film than with many others.