In this task, you must classify if a given review is positive/negative, indicating your answer as P or N.
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Question: writing a screenplay for a thriller is hard .
harder than pouring concrete under the texas sun . harder than building a bridge over troubled waters . and incidentally , a whole heck of a lot harder than writing a movie review .
thrillers are all variations on a theme .
you have a smart , resourceful , and powerful bad guy , who has a goal he has to meet .
you have a noble and brave good guy , who has to protect the innocent , kill the bad guy , and not get killed himself in the process .
the trick of thriller writing is doing all of this in an interesting and novel manner .
this simple formula can lead to classic movies like north by northwest , high noon , or silence of the lambs , or big summer blockbusters like men in black , the fugitive , or air force one , or it can lead to utter dreck like masterminds , event horizon , kull the conqueror .
.. . is anyone else getting depressed here ?
point is , it 's not enough to follow the formula .
you 've got to throw in something extra , something good and new and better than the last version .
something to surprise and move all of us people who buy the tickets and the popcorn and the happy meals .
this is a hard thing to do , but it is absolutely necessary in every way .
without that something extra -- whether it 's a great plot or a well - written screenplay , or great special effects or great locations or great casting or great performances or great big hungry dinosaurs -- the movie fails .
that 's why the jackal , with all its starpower , with all its budget , with all its hype , gets a big fat f. bruce willis is the bad guy , the jackal , a legendary killer for hire .
richard gere is the good guy , a former ira assassin with a vendetta against the jackal .
the jackal is trying to kill someone .
gere is trying to stop him .
will gere be able to stop the assassination in time and kill the jackal ?
( i 'll give you three guesses , and the first two do n't count . )
there are no surprises awaiting the audience in the jackal , no moment when you say to yourself , " i wonder what happens next ?
"
the script for the jackal is n't ripped straight from today 's headlines .
it 's ripped off , straight from an episode of millennium .
throughout the movie , we learn what the jackal 's plans are and how he intends to accomplish them .
no surprise .
the fun of a movie like this should come from richard gere figuring out what the jackal 's plan is and developing a clever plan to foil the bad guy .
instead , we get two ( count 'em , two ) scenes where gere is sitting in an fbi conference room somewhere and instantly divines the jackal 's plan just as if he 's frank black ( or more likely , just as if he 's been handed a copy of the script ) .
and we never get more than a superficial clue as to why gere has had this flash of insight .
it 's like gere 's character is psychic , but neither he nor the fbi ( or the screenwriters ) seem to know it .
and just like in millennium , the bad guy has an overwhelming need to go after the people the good guy cares about , whether or not they are important to what he 's trying to do or not .
what 's more , in the last half of the movie , the jackal , supposedly a super - smart professional terrorist who never makes a mistake , comes down with a major case of the stupids .
as for the performances .
.. bruce willis manages to get through the whole movie without a wisecrack , which is a major achievement , but not enough reason to see the movie .
his disguises are good , but not as good or as interesting as val kilmer 's in the saint .
richard gere is made to talk the entire movie in an irish accent , which detracts from his otherwise lifeless and dull performance .
sidney poitier is probably the most disappointing element in a overwhelmingly disappointing movie -- not that his performance is bad or anything , it 's not , but it is sad that hollywood wo n't use this talented actor in any part other than an fbi agent ( shoot to kill , sneakers ) .
writing a good plot and a good screenplay , like i said , is hard , but it can be done .
it was n't done here .
it is our job as consumers to reward good screenplays and to denounce bad and uninteresting ones .
do not go see this movie .
you 'll only encourage the producers to make more just like it .
instead , stay home and rent day of the jackal , or in the line of fire , or a fire safety video , for crying out loud .
anything other than the jackal , which lives up to its name by gnawing the dead bones of other , better movies .

Answer: N

Question: it should have been a classic .
a great cast of respected supporting actors .
an interesting premise of loser comic book characters .
however , " mystery men " proved to be one of the great disappointments of 1999 .
the jokes were bland and hackneyed from talents who have previously made audiences laugh with their unique rituals .
the number of cliches and shallow characters made the film difficult to sit through seriously hurting its attempt of having a fast paced premise .
the script tried to deliver a series of small jokes throughout the film but without a big laugh - out - loud joke and mediocre small jokes , it failed miserably at being entertaining at all .
the jokes were not funny for a number of reasons .
they had been used a number of times before in previous films , the best ones , which were mediocre to begin with , were ruined in the trailer , and the expectation of laughing at clever , unique gags from clever unique comedians when there were none to laugh at greatly damaged the film .
" mystery men " might have worked if it was an ensemble cast of newcomers trying to break into the business .
but with veterans doing this kind of junk , it really questioned whether their other work was as funny as originally thought .
thankfully most actors in this movie will appear in five other movies before the new year arrives to help viewers forget this little movie .
the film follows a band of wannabe superheroes living in a wannabe gotham city who are ridiculed by their fellow citizens and villains because of their clumsiness and failure to save they day and capture the bad guy .
the fact is these pathetic losers are not needed because their city already has a successful superhero , captain amazing , who has recently captured every evil - doer in the city .
captain amazing ( played terribly by an uninspired greg kinnear ) , because of his success in the past , is worried that he will lose popularity .
after freeing one of the most notorious bad guys in the city ( geoffrey rush , overacting just a bit too much ) to keep himself busy , things get out of hand when captain amazing is captured .
it is up to the wannabe superheroes to save the day .
by the time this section of the plot is finished , the interest for what happens ( if you have n't already figured it out ) is very low .
there are very few scenes which catch the viewers complete attention .
the first scene in the film , which shows the wannabes trying to save the day , feels like it was seriously edited down .
right when it was beginning to become slightly funny seeing these actors get humiliated at an old folk 's home by some masked goons , captain amazing comes in and saves the day ? or ruins the movie .
instead of editing this scene , more editing should have been done in areas such as the unnecessary romance between mr .
furious ( ben stiller ) and monica , a waitress ( claire forlani ) or the vast majority of the film , which is the heroes talking at a coffee table about how their day was .
a simple rule : more silly action is needed in order to make a silly action movie work .
another major problem with " mystery men " is that every actor in it seemed very uncomfortable and consequently gave terrible performances .
the film depended on its cast to work fluently together , like a bunch of old friends working together in an amiable reunion .
however , most characters seemed like they did not even want to be in this film or at least the script made it seem this way .
to pull one of the actors in this film randomly out of a hat , paul reubens , who disappeared from acting to everyone 's joy , returns here leaving very little to be impressed about .
as a wannabe who uses flatulence for a weapon , all of his jokes must therefore be fart jokes .
fart jokes that have all been heard before and will inevitably be heard again in future films thanks to the success of " american pie " and " there 's something about mary . "
" mystery men " drags on towards the end to a point where anything else in the world is more entertaining .
anyone with a brain knows each one of the heroes is going to be successful at their talent in the end and each one is going to contribute in a helpful way .
so why continue to watch ?
this film is far from a worthy guilty pleasure .
" mystery men " indeed does this and every time a character succeeds another one congratulates him and says " i knew you could do it ! "
" mystery men " fails in every category it attempts to pass .
what makes this film so bad is that it had the potential to be wonderful and unforgettable .
terrible acting , terrible script , and a terrible waste of time
changes opinions about all of these actors .
"
i 'm unpredictable ! " an overexcited ben stiller shouts out .
no ben , you 're the complete opposite .

Answer: N

Question: the most interesting thing about virus is that the title of the film does not refer to the clunky robotic animals that try to kill our heroes .
alas , it refers to our heroes !
as it turns out , the alien race that sends a computer virus to earth ( via the mir space station ) thinks of the human race as a virus -- perhaps even a cancer -- that needs to be eradicated before it spreads any further .
after all , we have taken up this entire planet , and if they let us live for another billion years or so , we might advance beyond our solar system and into the next one .
but the human race does n't have much to worry about .
after all , there 's a woman named foster ( jamie lee curtis )
out there stopping the computer virus .
she 's the chief navigator on a sea vessel ; travelling with her is captain everton ( donald sutherland ) , steve baker ( william baldwin ) , woods ( marshall bell ) , squeaky ( julio oscar mechoso ) , and richie ( sherman augustus ) .
they 're all sailing in a typhoon one lovely evening when they stumble across an enormous , abandoned russian satellite ship in international waters .
lucky for us , we already saw that the computer virus has taken over the ship and eliminated everyone on board .
the evil captain everton thinks he 's going to take the ship in and get a reward ; he convinces his crew that there 's going to be big money , so they try to salvage the ship .
soon , however , when it 's apparent that no one is on board and that the ship has no power , they realize that something bad must have happened .
finally , they meet nadia ( joanna pacula ) who explains their situation : a computer virus has taken over the ship !
it 's creating bio - mechanical life - forms to eliminate the human race !
virus is a truly dumb action thriller , one of negligible intelligence and innovation .
when considering the entire film , you will realize that it lacks a single original scene .
it 's a direct rip - off of nearly every james cameron film ( aliens , the abyss , and the terminator films are the most plagiarized ) ; more importantly , it 's basically the same movie as last year 's deep rising .
i liked deep rising simply because it 's funny
-- it knows it 's silly and derivative .
virus takes itself seriously .
and , in the most serious manner possible ,
it steals from every good and bad film of the genre , showing you countless familiar scenes , and sporting a cookie - cutter plot that any film of the sci - fi / horror genre could fit with a little trimming .
but what is so amazing about virus is how poorly the whole thing has been thought out .
okay , let me get this straight --
the alien race ( which is never really explained ) is basically sentient electricity .
they need to make themselves physical , so they use a space station to get onto a ship ( which is surrounded by water , but who cares about that ) .
on the ship , they make a bunch of clunky , immobile robots that somehow kill three hundred people .
after that , they start using the dead people to create half - human , half - machine creatures that look like the terminator but are much worse at walking around .
the leader , of course , is a big creature .
every film like this has a big creature at the end , but the big creature in virus is so big that it has to tear down the walls to move around .
virus is indeed a cliched film , but the central flaw lies in the fact that the computer virus just is n't very threatening .
it 's established that they can simply turn off the power to stop it , but the virus has sealed the power room by the time our heroes get there .
on one level , virus is almost passable fun .
it 's really gory , and a few of the scenes have interesting camp appeal ( the director , john bruno , worked on a lot of cameron 's films ) .
there 's also a nice array of actors , even though none of them do any acting
( except for donald sutherland , who does a lot of very bad acting ) .
the bottom line , however , is this : virus is a bad movie .
it rips off a lot of good movies that are worth seeing .
in that order , i recommend that you rent any one of the alien films , simply to admire the qualities of a creature that actually threatens our heroes .

Answer:
N