I just came back home from seeing this movie and I wanted to share my thoughts right away because this movie was disappointing. While the concept is interesting, the execution was very poor.
I will start my review with the good points. The first good point about this movie is the suspense. I must admit that I got hooked right away by the story. You see the president of the United States being shot but nothing is what it seems. The rest of the movie gives you the answers bits by bits. The second good point about this movie is the acting. Almost every character in the movie is believable and the performances are quite solid. Two thumbs up for Dennis Quaid in his role of veteran secret service agent Barnes and to Forest Whitaker who impresses me with every single performance he gives. Not only does he plays convincingly, he impersonates every character he plays (Last King of Scotland anyone?). However, Taghmaoui and Zurer are the weakest link in the bunch. That's it for the good points. As for the weaknesses of this movie, they are many.
I will start with the factual errors that plagued the whole movie from start to finish. The movie tells us events that happened during an international counter-terrorism summit. However, the host country is not represented by the Spanish prime minister or any other high ranking Spanish politician. The country is represented by the mayor of Salamanca who offers his city to the world. OUCH!!! Actually an International summit is organized on a state level and only the President (Or prime minister or Chancellor etc) of the host country is responsible of the city and the facilities that will be used for the event, not the mayor. This is an international summit for God's sake not a municipal trivial event. Secondly, in such summits, the general public is not allowed in the premises of the event as depicted in the movie. That is no way to have such a large crowd present during an announcement of such importance. The only people who could have been present would have been high ranking officials, head of states and important leaders, not average Joes. Furthermore, the protesters wouldn't have been allowed to be that close to the premises of the event. There's always a security perimeter that the general public can never cross and it's usually quite large.The second main weakness of the movie is how its subject matter is treated. I assume that the main subject of the movie was terrorism. However, the story doesn't give us any objective treatment, actually it's biased. Terrorism is again pinned on Arabs, as the summit unites Arab states and the West. There is no explanation as what western countries were present, it just states the West. There are no subtleties. There is no mention of what leads to terrorism or the way to confront this dangerous phenomenon. Therefore, terrorists in this movie are depicted as your usual stereotypical bad guy. There's not even a remote attempt to explain their background or the reasons that push them to do what they do or to believe in what they believe. They are just terrorists who want to hurt civilized countries. Later in the movie you'll learn that the attempt on the presidential life was a vendetta by the terrorists because they failed to smuggle a dirty bomb out of Morocco. Wow! How credible is that! Suffice to say that it's more likely for a dirty bomb to be smuggled out of Pakistan or Central Asia not out of Morocco. The third main weakness of the movie is its character development. It's actually non existent in this movie except for Thomas Barnes, Howard Lewis and Javier. There is no development for the other characters in the movie. Who are they really? What motivates them to do what they do? The terrorist bare Spanish names but are they truly Spanish? What led to the betrayal of Kent Taylor (Mathew Fox's character)? Was it ideological? Does he hold a grudge against his government? We don't know and the movie makes no effort to give us a clue. The last weakness that I will list here is the narrative style used to tell the story. We were supposed to see the story from the perspective of eight different people. However, this choice is ambiguous and not well executed. For the first two thirds of the movie you can really see the story from different perspectives. While this may be interesting at first, the constant rewinding sequences become boring and redundant by the third time. Many people left the auditorium after the third time and I couldn't help but close my eyes to avoid watching the rewinding sequences again. When the movie reached the final third, it was apparent to me that the director didn't know what he was doing anymore. The perspective story telling is totally abandoned and we are actually led to see the perspective of three different characters at the same time. This choice makes the first 60 minutes of the movie totally irrelevant. Why did the director choose to start with a specific narrative style and then abandon it for the final 30 minutes? Why didn't he stick with a conventional story telling style from the start? Did he want to make a Rashomon style movie? Was he trying to use a Pulp Fiction type of storytelling? If that was his intention, then he totally failed to accomplish his goals.
All in all, I give this movie a 4 stars out of 10. It remains a suspenseful and thrilling movie but its flaws outweigh its strong points. My advice: Watch it once, forget it and don't expect to see or learn anything new from it.
I will start my review with the good points. The first good point about this movie is the suspense. I must admit that I got hooked right away by the story. You see the president of the United States being shot but nothing is what it seems. The rest of the movie gives you the answers bits by bits. The second good point about this movie is the acting. Almost every character in the movie is believable and the performances are quite solid. Two thumbs up for Dennis Quaid in his role of veteran secret service agent Barnes and to Forest Whitaker who impresses me with every single performance he gives. Not only does he plays convincingly, he impersonates every character he plays (Last King of Scotland anyone?). However, Taghmaoui and Zurer are the weakest link in the bunch. That's it for the good points. As for the weaknesses of this movie, they are many.
I will start with the factual errors that plagued the whole movie from start to finish. The movie tells us events that happened during an international counter-terrorism summit. However, the host country is not represented by the Spanish prime minister or any other high ranking Spanish politician. The country is represented by the mayor of Salamanca who offers his city to the world. OUCH!!! Actually an International summit is organized on a state level and only the President (Or prime minister or Chancellor etc) of the host country is responsible of the city and the facilities that will be used for the event, not the mayor. This is an international summit for God's sake not a municipal trivial event. Secondly, in such summits, the general public is not allowed in the premises of the event as depicted in the movie. That is no way to have such a large crowd present during an announcement of such importance. The only people who could have been present would have been high ranking officials, head of states and important leaders, not average Joes. Furthermore, the protesters wouldn't have been allowed to be that close to the premises of the event. There's always a security perimeter that the general public can never cross and it's usually quite large.The second main weakness of the movie is how its subject matter is treated. I assume that the main subject of the movie was terrorism. However, the story doesn't give us any objective treatment, actually it's biased. Terrorism is again pinned on Arabs, as the summit unites Arab states and the West. There is no explanation as what western countries were present, it just states the West. There are no subtleties. There is no mention of what leads to terrorism or the way to confront this dangerous phenomenon. Therefore, terrorists in this movie are depicted as your usual stereotypical bad guy. There's not even a remote attempt to explain their background or the reasons that push them to do what they do or to believe in what they believe. They are just terrorists who want to hurt civilized countries. Later in the movie you'll learn that the attempt on the presidential life was a vendetta by the terrorists because they failed to smuggle a dirty bomb out of Morocco. Wow! How credible is that! Suffice to say that it's more likely for a dirty bomb to be smuggled out of Pakistan or Central Asia not out of Morocco. The third main weakness of the movie is its character development. It's actually non existent in this movie except for Thomas Barnes, Howard Lewis and Javier. There is no development for the other characters in the movie. Who are they really? What motivates them to do what they do? The terrorist bare Spanish names but are they truly Spanish? What led to the betrayal of Kent Taylor (Mathew Fox's character)? Was it ideological? Does he hold a grudge against his government? We don't know and the movie makes no effort to give us a clue. The last weakness that I will list here is the narrative style used to tell the story. We were supposed to see the story from the perspective of eight different people. However, this choice is ambiguous and not well executed. For the first two thirds of the movie you can really see the story from different perspectives. While this may be interesting at first, the constant rewinding sequences become boring and redundant by the third time. Many people left the auditorium after the third time and I couldn't help but close my eyes to avoid watching the rewinding sequences again. When the movie reached the final third, it was apparent to me that the director didn't know what he was doing anymore. The perspective story telling is totally abandoned and we are actually led to see the perspective of three different characters at the same time. This choice makes the first 60 minutes of the movie totally irrelevant. Why did the director choose to start with a specific narrative style and then abandon it for the final 30 minutes? Why didn't he stick with a conventional story telling style from the start? Did he want to make a Rashomon style movie? Was he trying to use a Pulp Fiction type of storytelling? If that was his intention, then he totally failed to accomplish his goals.
All in all, I give this movie a 4 stars out of 10. It remains a suspenseful and thrilling movie but its flaws outweigh its strong points. My advice: Watch it once, forget it and don't expect to see or learn anything new from it.