Highly Overrated But Still Good

Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.

Is there anyone from China writing reviews about how nonsense details they have in the movie? the script writer and even the whole crew need much much more homeworks to do. I mean geographical details at least. I knew that the script writer wanna to set the coincidental maps between Bahamas shore and east China coast shore. but you'd better put the Amrican military base in Okinawa, Japan. there is no base in Penghu, Taiwan, and Okinawa is shorter flying to Shanghai. and they need to set the prison site at Tilanqiao prison in Shanghai, the Suzhou pirson is far inland of China, I do not think that the helicopters can fly over the Shanghai air-defense zone unless you cut all the power grid of eastern China rather than only Suzhou city.it's the year of 1991, why there are so many cultural revolution slogan on the prison wall. which had taken place in 60s-70s. do you think it's the graffiti wall in a bar. and the accent of those Chinese actor are cantonese ,not standard mandarin. it might be not easy to find a group of Chinese actors who from mainland China to speak the local accent or mandarin as I guess. I believe that there might be no one knows about it, to the western audiences and the movie crews, they are all the same. and those uniform of prison guards is big farce, the crew might not know the details too. I do not want elaborate more on this.The van used in the film in Suzhou prison, then used the same van in Beirut, Lebanon. I do not think you are short of budget, which then you can rent several helicopters to film. and the scence that all prisoners knock their rice bowl on the cell fence togehter, that only will happen in american movie, it doesn't look like China at all.Despite those weakness which I do not want list them all, I also want to say it's standard and good hollywood movies though, no big mistakes on other elements of the film. from this point of view, the only way can explain all this is that the u. s. film industry or amrican hoi polloi have little knowledge about China, even they want to work hard on it. so I also begin to doubt about American movie that depicts Middle East, Russia and Africa then, it's all your own imagary pictures of them.

Nathan Muir (Robert Redford) is about to retire from the CIA when he is given a tip-off that an old colleague Tom Bishop (Brad Pitt) has been captured and is being held in a Chinese prison. Upon discovering that Bishop will be executed within the next 24 hours and with the CIA seemingly being prepared to do nothing about it, Muir takes it upon himself to do his utmost to get Bishop freed within the 24 hour deadline...To all intents and purposes this is a fairly good action/thriller with plenty of Tony Scott's trademark touches; quick and flashy editing, some decent shootouts and explosions. It isn't all style though and what you actually get here is a reasonably good story - it's one that is well-developed and through Redford's narration we do get to learn quite a bit about Muir and Bishop (there's certainly enough here to become invested in the story). One other positive with this film comes with Muir running his own 'operation' in order to try to facilitate Bishop's escape (this in itself makes part of the story exciting and throws in a couple of interesting plot turns).Part of the problem with this film is that it is a bit plot heavy and crammed with far too much exposition - whilst it all serves a purpose and nicely pieces everything together in the end I couldn't help but feel that a little trimming here and there wouldn't hurt. It's also fair to say that clocking in at just over 2 hours it is a little on the long side.Redford and Pitt are both solid here and they are both developed quite well as characters, but the downside of this is that they aren't given a great deal of screen time together meaning that they are never really given much of an opportunity to build up any kind of rapport together.Still when the focus is on Tony Scott doing his 'thing' and Redford running his own operation the film rarely disappoints. However, when the focus switches to Redford's narration it becomes a bit plot heavy and wearying and at times tarnishes some of its greatness.

In 1991, CIA agent Tom Bishop (Brad Pitt) is captured trying to help Elizabeth Hadley (Catherine McCormack) escape Chinese PLA Su Chou prison. Nathan Muir (Robert Redford) on his last day before retirement tries to navigate the politically sensitive situation. He recruited sniper Bishop back in '75 Vietnam for a mission.Director Tony Scott is making a slick espionage movie with two of the greatest stars in the universe. This should be better but it's only passable. Scott is pulling out all the editing tricks to artificially juice up the excitement. I'm not sure it fits the material but it's perfectly watchable. It wants to be an action movie when it's more of a tense chess game.

This is one of the best political thriller movies i have ever watched in my entire lifetime with Robert Redford and Brad Pitt giving knockout performances throughout the entire film. Director Tony Scott really knew what he was doing behind the camera while making this excellent film turn out into being a box office success.Both Redford and Pitt give one of the best performances in both of their entire careers as actors.The movie itself will keep you on the edge of your seat you wouldn't be able to pause the movie if you watch it either on DVD or on TV if you never ever seen this epic thriller before in your entire life. However this picture is on my list for the best movies of 2001.