The film focuses on Alice Bowman (Meg Ryan) whose husband Peter (David Morse) is kidnapped by guerillas in Latin America. A mercenary named Terry Thorne (Russell Crowe) is called in to do an extraction but he falls in love with Alice. The film goes back and forth between the rebel camp and the ransom payers to add tension and suspense to the film. Crowe finally heeds to his sense of duty and goes off to rescue his rival lover and voila! The film is over!

The simple result of these machinations in this film is that it’s boring. Whatever action Crowe and Ryan enjoyed off-screen, the two simply have no chemistry on-screen which makes their characters rather hard to believe. Furthermore, this is a simple kidnap-ransom film without any mystery and Tony Gilroy’s screenplay is just too long for this kind of story making it boring: there’s no action worth seeing in this film and this kind of story, unless it has a very intricate plot, is suitable only for an action film! Also, the fact that Alice is contemplating an affair while her husband is ready to have his throat slit doesn’t make her a very appealing character. Finally, what’s the deal with putting this in a country that doesn’t exist? It would have made perfect sense to place this film in Columbia or Peru which have the highest kidnapping rates in the world. Given that fact, I don’t think those nations could claim to be insulted if they were the context of the film.

The title to this film should be more properly addressed to the director as to the value of this film. This is a very boring film with shallow dialogue and an overextended screenplay that really has no purpose or direction. This movie isn’t worth renting or buying.
Rating: 1 / 5