The Package (1989)Well, if you can get past the first half hour you're past the worst of this up and down thriller. It's never brilliant, but the scenes in the U.S. (Chicago and Washington) are more convincing than the East Berlin stuff, which has only some nice location shooting to recommend it. Later on there are car chases that are fun, and more nice location shooting, and even some very convincingly boring political speeches (brief). At its best, there is tension and surprise, but not often enough even of that.Many of the minor actors simply can't hold up the very weak script. The exception? Gene Hackman, his usual brilliant, subtle, convincing self. It's very much a one man show, but a tough act even for him with the forced plot, the forced turn of events, the hyped up events, and the plain old bad lines now and then. Just to be clear this is high stakes stuff, there are Commies, neo-Nazis, corrupt cops, corrupt servicemen, an intrigue against the president, protests against disarmament (a timely issue 1989) and lots of old and new friendships tested and questionable. It's a lot for any movie, and too much for a clumsily written one, which this is.There is Tommi Lee Jones to be reckoned with, also convincing, but with a small sporadic part. The music by James Newton Howard is pushy at first (to the point of annoying) but settles in to a professional gait that really works. The filming is quite good if not exceptional, and edited pretty well. Some of you might like all of this a lot, but overall there's just that issue of corny and exaggerated lines which will sometimes make you cringe. And the painfully cliffhanger ending? It's what must happen in this kind of formula movie.Director Andrew Davis gives a preview, in a way, of that chase and intrigue film he would direct to great success a few years later, "The Fugitive," a better movie in every way. Watch this with that in mind for something to do.

During this movie I had some fun to predict what will happen next. If you had watched (or read) many Thrillers with the Cold War as Topic it's quite easy. This movie is like a time travel back to 1980's. The music score was typical 80's as the photography of the action scenes. Not only the photography and the score were solid like all the actors. Gene Hackman was the leading cast next to Tommy Lee Jones, Dennis Franz, Pam Grier and Joanna Cassidy. Gene Hackman is more or the less the same character as he was in many other thrillers. This time he is a good U.S. Sgt. who had some bad luck in his life but is still good enough to fight against all enemies of the U.S. Tommy Lee Jones is playing a villain and he always was great in such Roles. Hopefully he is doing more roles like that again in the future.The suspenseful final wasn't without flaws but overall I enjoyed "The Package". Not the best Cold War Thriller but entertaining enough.

Maybe it was his role as Gary Gilmore in The Exectioner's Song seven years previous that got him noticed and cast in this movie, but the career of Tommy Lee Jones, roommate of Al Gore at Harvard, was never the same afterwards. He got the crazy role in Under Siege and the the super role in The Fugutive and the rest is history.His part here was small, but significant. Another small part went to Pam Grier, who managed to depart fairly early in the film. Oh, well, I always like seeing her.The main actors were Gene Hackman (Unforgiven, The french Connection), Joanna Cassidy (Who Framed Roger Rabbit), and Dennis Franz (NYPD Blue). They stumbled into an assignation plot, and gave us a good thriller.I would be remiss if I didn't mention Marco St. John. Probably not a name many are familiar with, but he has had a lot of small roles, and I used to know him when I lived in Mississippi many years ago. Just wanted to throw that in there.

Do you believe the soviet leaders of the 80's to have been peace-loving angels, while American generals were a bunch of Nazis? This movie's creators want you to believe precisely that. Hating America too much can induce some people to go far beyond the accepted limits of human stupidity. The accumulated effect of thousand of movies like this one is to dumb down large audiences, to make them to believe American regime is a kind of right-wing stalinism, as if soviet movie makers were allowed by a benevolent communist establishment to produce pieces of anti-soviet propaganda and even to get rich by doing so. The lack of the sense of proportions is the main feature of leftist imagination.