Excellent adaptation.

A lot of fun.

As somebody who had not heard any of this before, it became a curious phenomenon to sit and watch a film and slowly have the realities begin to click into place.

There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

During his rather brief but glorious heyday, Arthur Penn seemed incapable of generating a merely functional scene; his work was at once thrillingly intimate and engaged and yet full of weighted, often melancholy implication. His work has the quality of a cinematic barometer - at its most vivid in the sixties; silent for much of the misbegotten seventies and then disillusioned and wayward; and then never fully himself from the eighties onward, as if America had lost its power to stimulate. Target is no doubt one of his least-cherished films, although by some measures (the more conventional ones) it's among his most proficient - it's seamlessly plotted, compellingly paced and entirely on top of its action scenes, especially the car chases. Gene Hackman's Walter Lloyd is a small-town lumber yard owner, so boring he won't even accompany his wife on a European vacation, until she disappears and he heads over with his son (Matt Dillon) in search of her: the first dead body shows up at the baggage claim, heralding Walter's past identity as a CIA Cold War super-operative, the detritus of which now provides a resurgent threat. Hackman is surely in tune with the broader idea, that however much the 80's might have seemed like a time of settling and resignation, nothing had been resolved; the surface might still crack both for worse (undermining all concepts of stability and predictability) and for better (Walter's resurrection of his buried self, and the consequent rewrite of his relationship with his son, portends a healthier and more vibrant future for the family). It's no surprise of course that the peril turns out to be caused by rot within the system, by duplicity and weak character. I suppose the degree to which you think the climactic fire symbolizes a broader possibility of cleansing might depend on how optimistic you felt at the time about peak-Reaganism. But it seems certain that the younger Penn would have found stranger and groovier patterns in the flames.

Walter Lloyd (Gene Hackman) runs a Dallas lumber company. His son Chris (Matt Dillon) repairs stock cars and doesn't get along with him. His wife Donna travels to Paris but she goes missing. Father and son go off to look for her. Soon the stodgy businessman Walter turns into a man of action without Chris' knowledge. Walter is approached by two gun men with Donna's jewelry but he turns the table on them. He used to work for the CIA and reconnects with an old college Barney Taber (Josef Sommer). Chris saves his father from another gun attack and he finally comes clean to his son.Matt Dillon is overplaying the bratty know-it-all rebellious teenager role. He overplays everything by a little like when he is first told. Hackman is more of the lead and he's very solid. It's a worthwhile watch for Hackman fans. It goes to lesser seen location like Germany. It's a competent spy action thriller but Matt Dillon's character keeps annoying me with his arrogant ignorance. He's being shot at, his father is a secret spy, his mother is kidnapped and he's still chasing tail.

The performances of Matt Dillon and Gene Hackman brought this film right over the top for me.Dillon's character grows from being an obnoxious teenager, who sees Dad as an un-hip set of car keys with a hand attached to them, through the astonishing realization that Dad just may be "James Bond".And Gene Hackman brings his blazing talent to the table, unfolding from a middle-aged, pokey, conservative, 35-mile-an-hour, aw-shucks businessman into a multilingual, multitalented super-spook.The two interact perfectly! As they face dangers and intrigue together in a wild ride across the globe to save Mom, it is a delight to see them discover and appreciate the depths of each others' characters and become friends and partners."Saving Mom", was almost irrelevant!

Ever think your dad was boring? Really good movie, classic Gene Hackman. Nice twists from the start to the end. Great car chases. Who would have thought those tiny Eastern Euro cars could do so much? Development of relationship between Hackman and Dillon is good. Recommend a rental.