swinging back and forth between silly action and serious plot

Rating: 5/10 (20 December 2002)

When I read through all this former comments then I see a lot of hip, hip hooray on all the manly behavior and the heroic stuff from the soldiers and how more or less realistic it was. I don't want to go into this part too much as I just find it way overrated. All in all is this movie an entertaining action flick. But the movie gets definitely saved from the good actors and not the action scenes that were sometimes just quite ridiculous. The writer of this action scenes and the script writer for them should better write silly stories like Indiana Jones as many were as unrealistic as those of the Indy movies.
Some of the car scenes tried a bit too hard to be cool that they appeared instead silly and ruined the serious mood of the story (e.g. the cable car which was flying like the Bus from Speed like someone placed a huge charge under it.). Another quite silly thing was the whole Dungeon&Dragons like construction, which was supposed to be under Alcatraz. That reminded me from the first moment more of Temple of Doom of the Indy series and again was quite contra productive for the serious plot.
Amazing how much activity in form of active leaking gas pipes (or whatever those flamethrowers were) and moving machinery there was under a building complex, which is supposed to be out of order. An old, complex maze combined with a bunch of booby traps from Ed's man had became that part of the movie much better as this extreme cheap excuse for the ex-con Connery to be back in that prison.
That all gave sometimes the impression like the director didn't know if he wanted to make a tense thriller or just a fast paced action flick with A-Team or Indy qualities. Maybe the writers for the excellent plot and the action scenes should have talked more with each other.
Personally I had preferred less silly action scenes and action sets and the movie had reached easily much better qualities like "Crimson Tide".
But the actors really save the day in many ways as they are much more believable as the described scenes. And the best of the movie is still Hans Zimmer's soundtrack which produces more atmosphere for the whole plot as the action scenes are, except the so often described shower room scene which was good. No wonder that this soundtrack was VERY often used for later trailers for all kinds of movies.
Without the described silly action scenes above would I give the movie maybe a 7 or 8 out of 10. But so the silly scenes cost something and reduce the movie to an action flick, which is barely above the average as it does swing too often between lighthearted and serious atmosphere. So I say 5.5 out of 10. That plot idea deserved a better action scriptwriter.