Hiring Travolta and Whitaker was a waste of money, since we can't recognize them behind pounds of matted hair and gnarly makeup. Their costumes look like they were purchased from the Goodwill store on the planet Tatooine. Lots of great movies have squalid heroes. But when the characters seem noxious on principle, we wonder if the art and costume departments were allowed to run wild. The director, Roger Christian, has learned from better films that directors sometimes tilt their cameras, but he has not learned why.
Some movies run off the rails.
I watched it in mounting gloom, realizing I was witnessing something historic, a film that for decades to come will be the punch line of jokes about bad movies. If the film had been destroyed in a similar cataclysm, there might have been a standing ovation.