The Package

The most concise word to describe this movie is underrated. Or perhaps, more accurately, never-rated. This movie seems to have slipped by the general populous without making any impression at all, which seems a shame to me. Look, I’m not going to try to argue that this some hidden gem that should be critically reevaluated as one of the great lost films of its time, but I will say that I’ve seen weaker political thrillers that get more attention (for example, Pakula‘s The Parallax View) and I feel that if this movie had been made by a different director, one who went on to make something a little more impactful than the kid’s movie Holes, people would still be talking about it rather than all collectively forgetting it exists.

The movie has its flaws, of course. In the opening, Gene Hackman’s character doesn’t quite seem to fit, by age, look, or performance, his supposed position and rank; the banter of military officers and enlisted can be clunky; and the prologue’s final sequence/assassination had me a bit incredulous. Here and there, when Hackman is working to unravel the conspiracy in the middle act, story beats can fall prey to predictable cliches. Finally, when the story resolves, it does so from a place of painful naiveté about the political world and the power-brokers within which might have felt comforting and appropriate back in the late 80s and early 90s but now feels out of touch and sophomoric.

However, setting those minor quibbles aside, what is left is an extremely effective and compelling conspiracy thriller all tied up in complicated late Cold War politicking and Eisenhower-like paranoia about the military industrial complex. When it comes to pacing, the movie does a solid job of showing you just enough to keep you wondering how deep the rabbit hole goes. This creates this great cadence where you can feel like you are putting together each of the pieces along with, or a little before (thanks to dramatic irony), the main characters but you rarely feel like you know so much that the story loses its teeth. Even if you guess very early on who the key players are and what motivates them, the movie is still able to keep you engaged with questions of how they think they can get away with it and how they might be stopped. This leads to plenty of the twists and turns needed to make a great thriller like this tick.

The performances are also great. Not that it should be huge shock with Tommy Lee Jones and Gene Hackman as your leads, but Jones’ cool detachment and Hackman’s sublimated panic are great foils for each other as they stand on opposite ends of the film’s events. The rest of the cast wasn’t particularly stand out, but also completely adequate to the job. The enemy agents hunting Hackman and company aren’t particularly noteworthy or memorable, but not in a bad way. Movies about shadowy conspiracies are often better served by antagonists that have a faceless energy to them, and the character of the main assassin is more than enough personality to carry the role of primary villain.

All in all, this is a movie worth watching for any lover of political thrillers and spy films. I’m so happy that I was able to discover it because, although it isn’t groundbreaking but forgotten classic, it is a very well made, tightly plotted, and deftly constructed thriller that is sometimes exactly what you are in the mood to watch. Finding hidden gems like this is, frankly, one of the great joys of being the voracious consumer of films that I am.

Would Recommend: If you are a fan of political or spy thrillers.

Would Not Recommend: If you aren’t into films about political conspiracies.