Alan J. Pakula directs Harrison Ford, Brad Pitt and Rubén Blades in this thriller where a decent NYC beat cop discovers his pretty lodger is an IRA gunrunner.

Underwhelming but not the utter disaster it was tagged as on release. It is a film that painstakingly sets up its two protagonists for either a cat-and-mouse action finale or a more character based drama… then pigheadedly achieves neither. Pitt gets lost in the mix, Ford does a lot with weak material. It is hard for Ford to make a bad film, he just is utterly compelling on screen, even in watery broth like this. Pitt was quoted as saying this was “the most irresponsible piece of filmmaking” he’d ever seen. You can understand why… his part is diminished, the politics iffy, the reshoots adding very little to an uncertain mix. Yet it idles along glossily and there’s rarely a scene that couldn’t work well in a more lively film. Average, unspectacular, old fashioned.

5

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