Gene Hackman gets himself busted out of prison by a nameless government agency who want him for an assassination. It's a given of course that Hackman has the proficient skills for the job.
Nobody tells him anything though, he's given as the audience is given bits and pieces of information. That's supposed to be suspenseful, instead it's annoying and boring.
Hackman goes through with the mission, but the getaway is messed up and the guy at the top of this mysterious entity orders everybody dead to cover it up. So everyone in the cast dies and at the end you don't really care.
One of the other reviewers pointed out that the film was originally twice as long, almost three hours and got chopped down quite a bit. Maybe something really was lost in the translation, but I tend to think it was a mercy act on the audience.
A very talented cast that had people like Richard Widmark, Candice Bergen, Mickey Rooney, Eli Wallach, and Edward Albert is so thoroughly wasted here it's a crime.
And we never do find out just what federal agency was doing all this, the FBI, the CIA, the DEA or even the IRS.
Nobody tells him anything though, he's given as the audience is given bits and pieces of information. That's supposed to be suspenseful, instead it's annoying and boring.
Hackman goes through with the mission, but the getaway is messed up and the guy at the top of this mysterious entity orders everybody dead to cover it up. So everyone in the cast dies and at the end you don't really care.
One of the other reviewers pointed out that the film was originally twice as long, almost three hours and got chopped down quite a bit. Maybe something really was lost in the translation, but I tend to think it was a mercy act on the audience.
A very talented cast that had people like Richard Widmark, Candice Bergen, Mickey Rooney, Eli Wallach, and Edward Albert is so thoroughly wasted here it's a crime.
And we never do find out just what federal agency was doing all this, the FBI, the CIA, the DEA or even the IRS.