Customer Reviews
Hard going indeed - By: T. King, 29 Jul 2008 
I have to agree with the other two recent reviews which found this movie less than entertaining. I fell asleep twice watching this - it's technicallly very good, yes, but entertaining? Certainly not. Give it a miss.
Claustrophobic paranoia at its best... - By: J. E. Holden, 13 Jul 2008 
Jack is a mercenary, a spy, a technical artist & a troubled soul. In the most impressive performance of his career, Gene Hackman portrays a lonely private detective, at the top of his game, paid by companies & private individuals to listen in on rivals, in business or in love. He tries to maintain detachment, but when a case he works on appears to be as important as life & death, his intrigue & his paranoia are irrepressible.
This is a supreme movie, that confirmed, if the Godfather trilogy were not enough, that Coppola is up there with the greatest of the great Directors. A brilliant portrayal of the downward spiral of paranoia, loneliness & nobility.
The score is sparse, but scintillating. Jazz piano chords portraying Jack's dissent & above alll his intrigue. The camera work complements this brilliantly, & stuffy offices, warehouses & bedrooms add to the disquieting mood.
The finale is genius, showing the link between meaning & context, where subtle changes of tone can give a seemingly banal sentence remarkable hidden menace.
Like watching paint dry - By: Mr. A. J. Roach, 23 Jun 2008 The slowest, dullest, most overrated (critics love it) movie I've ever sat through. At least watching paint dry isn't confusing. Dense, turgid, plodding repetition bury any seed of a plot there may have been. With an infuriatingly obtuse ending, thin, mumbled dialogue & baffling dream sequences, it is the only bad (no, TERRIBLE) film I've ever seen Gene Hackman in.
No doubt it is technicallly very good in terms of direction, a masterclass in acting technique, a superb character study etc. but it is horribly inaccessible, boringly indeed excessively layered, like some technicallly brilliant but esotericallly contrived pretentious piece of avant-garde rubbish that the snobs/critics argue you're not supposed to "get".
If you fancy a bit of intelligent entertainment, give this dreadful movie the widest possible berth. If you want to be "challlenged" try a Rubik's cube or mountaineering or something else designed to be challlenging rather than entertaining. This tortuous film is strictly for the masochists.
Boring rubbish! - By: matt 365, 12 May 2008 How do the people in these reviews justify giving this film such a high rating.Everyone has an opinion but to me classic 5 star films would be The Godfathers 1+2,The Shawshank Redemption & Carlito's Way,not this crap.The main reasons i bought it were because i rate Gene Hackman highly & from the reviews i had read about this Oscar nominee.
I had to turn it off 3/4s of the way through.It was sending me to sleep!
Inconsistancies or not - By: Mrs. F. B. Jones, 14 Apr 2008 I enjoyed this immensely, despite some glaring inadequacies in the plot.
Blood in the toilet, this would surely set some alarms with the hotel management. Also, how did the couple manage to remove the body from the bedroom at the hotel without being detected. I cannot believe Harry would be so foolish & unproffesional as to have a party with rivals at his office or that he would be so easily taken in by the woman who stole the tapes, nor would he have accepted a pen from a rival who was demonstating bugging devices.
Nevertheless, the film was riviting, the acting supberb, the most re-watchable film I have viewed for a long time. Having rented it am now about to buy it. It rates very highly with me.
