Mel Gibson gives a wonderful performance of a nut in this movie, such a lifelike portrayal of Jerry, an over-the-top conspiracy buff cab driver, that after 10 solid minutes of listening to his paranoid delusions, and watching him inflict his theories on ALL the unfortunate riders in his cab, that we're hoping he gets beat to a pulp by the bad guys, and small wonder that he soon is... okay, not 'beat to a pulp', just tormented... but he unfortunately somehow manages to escape, and present us with a further 1 hour and 25 minutes of celluloid.
What the sophisticated and attractive character played by Julia Robert in this potboiler sees in Gibson, to let him get anywhere within 10 feet of her, is unclear. But no matter how nutty his utterances, Alice Sutton (Roberts) seems intrigued. Well, otherwise we wouldn't have a story.
Even though I wasn't thrilled with the character Gibson was playing, I hated to see him tied with duct tape to a wheelchair with his eyes propped open, and being tortured by a cluster of 'spooks'. After his miraculous escape from that situation, it isn't long before he's minding his business in Midtown Manhattan when he suddenly notices a black helicopter has swooped down to 50 feet above street level, and 4 or 5 guys are coming down on ropes to get him. This is the height of unreality and reminded me more than anything else of the comical "Men in Black". The very idea that these spook-propelled black helicopters would disgorge a pack of men on ropes, and nobody on the crowded street would think twice about it, or even seem to notice, is the height of unbelievability.
You can only suspend your disbelief for so long, and then you start disbelieving everything. I did have a hard time accepting Patrick Stewart's performance as a creepy bad guy in this film. Obviously he didn't want to be typecast forever as ultra-good-guy Picard on "Star Trek : The Next Generation", but is it wise to go to the opposite extreme and play someone who is just asking to be killed? At least he wasn't asked to wear a wig. That would be frightening in the extreme - Patrick Stewart with a full head of hair, albeit a wig!
One thing I did NOT appreciate about this movie is the ambiguity of the trick ending, about whether the main characters go happily off into the sunset or not. (I am trying NOT to give away the endings, even while needing to talk about them in these reviews!) But it is NOT an ending where the good guy is kissing the girl, let's put it that way, and it follows a nasty trick of making the audience think the hero is dead for sure. It sure does look like one of those bullets catches him right in the heart!
Our female star finds a little pin attached to a piece of cloth which may imply her lover is still alive, because who else would have put it there? But that is a weak, weak ending. Meanwhile, our hero views the lady from the vantage point of the back seat of a spook-driven car, but wouldn't it have been nicer if Jerry and Alice had just gotten a chance to hold hands as they went off into the sunset? They could have both been on horseback. Or both in the back seat of a car. But not as divided up and possibly never to meet again, as the kid is from the girl he loves at the end of Spiderman, let's say, another movie I have to quibble with on this point. An ending which makes you wonder... Who's writing these scripts, anyway? Leave the ambiguity for the plot, not the ending. Make it a clearly happy ending - that would be even better!
