Such a frustrating disappointment

Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

Simple and well acted, it has tension enough to knot the stomach.

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

What starts off as a fairly promising film completely collapses after the first 20 to 30 minutes. Kelly Hu plays rookie FBI agent "Seiku Kobayshi" who volunteers to go undercover as a call-girl in order to plant a listening device into the bathroom of a dangerous white supremacist organization. Once inside the organization she guns down the leader, "Victor Serlano" (played by Ian Zierling) and several of his men. When FBI agent "Zack Grant" (played by Russell Crowe) arrives on the scene, Seiku jumps out of the high-rise to her death. During the follow-up investigation it is learned that Seiku had very recently contacted an important leader of the Yakuza named "Yuji" (Etsushi Toyokawa). This results in speculation that she was somehow coerced by Yuji to kill Victor, so FBI agent Zack Grant is sent to Japan to investigate. A gun-battle then ensues and Zack arrests Yuji in order to take him back to the United States. Meanwhile, Frank Serlano (Michael Lerner), the father of the white supremacist leader, kidnaps Zack's son "Eric" (Andrew J. Ferchland) in order to pressure Zack to bring Yuji to him. On the way back "Mary" (Helen Slater) is introduced into the film as one of the flight attendants who becomes inadvertently involved in the scenario. So far so good. Unfortunately, it is at this point where the film begins to deteriorate as the audience is treated to one far-fetched incident after another. While Helen Slater played her part adequately, the same can't be said for Russell Crowe as this wasn't one of his better performances. But the main responsibility for this fiasco belongs on the shoulder of the director/writer, Frank A. Cappello. With the cast that he had he should have been able to produce a much better film. Instead he chose stunts and gimmicks over good acting and a reasonable plot. What a shame.

The one thing positive to take away from watching this movie is that Russell Crowe has always been a good actor, even before he was known widely. This movie came out the same year as "The Quick and the Dead" where he played a reformed gunslinger forced into a gunfight tournament.Russell Crowe is FBI Agent Zack Grant and the movie begins with the botched assignment to have an new agent drop a listening device into a suspect's apartment, but things go terribly wrong. So Zack needs to redeem himself by finding the person responsible.Zack finds that the agent had made several calls to Etsushi Toyokawa as Yuji Kobayashi and assumes he was the bad guy responsible, so he sets out to arrest him and bring him back. Very shaky assumption.On the flight back to L.A. a critical role is filled by Helen Slater (of early "Supergirl" fame) as Mary, a rookie flight attendant who tries hard to get along with Zack but doesn't quite get there.There could be a summary of the story but I am going to skip that. This movie is barely as good as its IMDb rating of "5". The dialog is very poor most of the time, and the characters are directed to do some very stupid things, often, to advance the plot. Just one example, Zack at one point has chased down Yuji in the desert after an escape, and as Zack begins to mumble something steps in front of Yuji in perfect position for Yuji to overpower him, which he does. No FBI agent in his right mind would have done that. There actually is a second positive thing to take away from watching this movie. I have no doubt the script writer and the director tried their best to make this a fine movie, so it just serves to illustrate how difficult the job is. When we see a fine movie with an interesting script and superb acting we tend to take it for granted, but few movie-makers have that skill.

I believe the only reason anyone would have seen this film is because Russell is in it.That was my reason.Russell does well in his role.Love his hair cut in this one.A better script was needed.But, we have to keep in mind, this was not a big budget film.Helen's character Mary could GET on the audience's nerves as well, even though she was a good person & meant well.You could tell why she got on Zack's nerves.Course, she has not done much in her career. When you consider the best thing she ever did was her guest spot on "Seinfeld".By the book, not really exciting action scenes.To be seen only if you are a fan of Russell's.

Never heard of this movie but it popped up one night on cable and I sat down to watch it. The movie as a whole is not bad but I get the feeling that the director wasn't sure exactly what type of movie he wanted to make. And after watching it, I still don't know. Is it an action move, a romantic comedy, a 48hr buddy movie... A 1\2 hour into what I thought was a basic action movie, it kinda just started to jump around. One scene it's action movie, next scene it's a romantic comedy, next scene it's an action comedy movie, etc...Besides the whole schizophrenia stuff, the movie is really not that bad. I pretty much like anything with Crowe and everyone with the exception of Slater is pretty good.I recommend this movie as long as there's not a good game.