{mosimage}The central square of the city of Salamanca becomes a battlefield with the arriving of the president of the United States…
Being the action shot in the Spanish city of Salamanca, I was especially motivated to watch this movie. But after the first minutes, my attention became dissolute. The initial attack and the sequences of the bomb exploding are visually shocking, but later the big possibilities that the plot offers to make a good film are wasted. The facts are told and re-told from different points of views of the people participating in trying to save or kill the President of USA during his visit to a conference in the city, and so much rewind becomes to be pretty annoying. The cast lists very good names like Dennis Quaid, Forest Whitaker, Sigourney Weaver or the Spanish Eduardo Noriega, but most of their appearances get pretty wasted and without rhythm with so many flashbacks all the time. For example, Sigourney Weaver appears at the beginning of the film, and then… nobody exactly knows what her role is there anymore… Forest Whitaker s acting skills are also basically wasted there, and his friendship relation with the little Spanish girl is forced and not plausible, nobody would believe that after a conversation of 5 seconds he must become her personal guard angel.
Eduardo Noriega is an excellent Spanish actor who could have given a much better performance than just the simple role of being chased during all the film for ending up shot. And so on, so on… There are not even nice twists in the end of the movie, something that for example another film full of flashbacks like Memento mastered; the bad guys soon are discovered to be really bad guys and the good guy is the typical American hero who will solve the situation just shooting around to the evil terrorists.
Resuming, a very disappointing movie. My advice is that you better try with another movie if you are tired of the typical action films that lead nowhere. And by the way, as a remark, the Spanish security forces do not usually speak so good English. They must have taken intensive language lessons while I was outside living in Finland.
Rating 2/5.