John Woo's continued attempt to translate his foreign success into Hollywood gold sees him take on bigger stars than Van Damme in Christian Slater and the resurrected star of Travolta. Slater and Travolta play pilots testing a new bomber, when one of them decides to steal the missiles on board the other must begin a personal fight to stop him.
As with Hard Target this is a solid enough action movie but it really could have been made by anyone, Woo's style only really comes through in a few scenes (the birds eye view of the opening boxing match, double handed gun play). This is a shame because the action scenes only occasionally get better than average.
The plot is weak and relies a lot on coincident and luck to keep things moving. This is quite insulting to an audience because it just shows that the script writers couldn't fix the plot as a workable story and decided to try and get this past. Travolta overplays the villain well, but perhaps overdoes the ticks and the madness a bit too much to be believable. Slater clearly wants to be like Keanu was in Speed but doesn't convince as an action hero, Mathis is cute but that doesn't make her performance good - she pretty much a non-entity and doesn't really have much chemistry with Slater.
Again a solid action movie that is OK for a Saturday night, but with the stars, the budget and a director of this calibre you can't help but feel this was a missed opportunity.
