Q: In this movie the year 2022 looks much like the seventies. This is amusing at first, but soon the viewer perceives how very different that decadent futuristic world is despite the appearances, how many things that we take for granted could become unavailable.

Characters often interact in a peculiar way, with no tact or manners or respect. I believe this is intentional, not bad acting. After all, who witnessed the social changes in the 60s and 70s may well assume that by 2022 an overpopulated city's inhabitants behave like that.

I didn't like most of the action scenes, apart the death of the priest: too cheap even for the seventies. The plot isn't too polished. But the great scenes and ideas - like the death of Sol, the way rioters and dead bodies are dealt with, the "furniture" - outweigh the shortcomings of this film.

8 out of 10.
A: positive
Q: This movie has always been a favorite of mine since first seeing it as a 12 year old kid in 1962 when it was shown on a Los Angeles television station's "late show". The characters are very engaging from the start of the picture, and it is too bad that the movie has never been released for video tape, nor is it ever shown on television (apparently due to a prohibition by the Estate of Moss Hart, the playwright/producer/director who wrote the story and first presented it on the New York stage during WWII -- the reason for denying its showing is hard to fathom more than 50 years after it was made). I did not see the movie again for over 30 years, when someone who had actually been a major cast member of the movie was able to get me a "bootlegged" copy on VHS (poor video quality, but good audio). My memory of it was correct: it was still an engaging and fascinating movie to watch. An amazing aspect of this film is just how many of its stars, just starting out in their careers at the time 1944), went on to became either major motion picture stars or at least well-known and fully-employed actors (e.g. Judy Holliday, Edmond O'Brien, Jeanne Crain, Barry Nelson, Don Taylor, Karl Malden, Peter Lind Hayes, George "Superman") Reeves, Red Buttons, Lee J. Cobb, Kevin McCarthy, and Gary Merrill). The scenes with the B-24 Liberators are terrific, especially the close-up shots where the details of the giant (for those times) 4-engine bomber (then 18,000+ manufactured, now nearly extinct) can be seen. Good insight into the different levels of training that a pilot-cadet went through on his way to being assigned to a bomber crew (of course, VERY gender-biased as was the trend of the day: only the MEN became pilots, the women just supported them in their roles -- hardly acceptable in today's world). I hope someday it will be released onto video for a new generation to enjoy.
A: positive
Q: Dialogue: stilted, cliched; Acting: hammy, cliched; Plot: predictable, cliched.

Just what are Christopher Plummer Nastassia Kinski doing in this "B" rubbish? Plummer was well established decades before this movie was made, Kinski had masterpieces like "Tess" and "Cat People" behind her... Must have been desperate.

The bad guys all have bad-guy accents - *bad* bad-guy accents! (Plummer especially! Where *did* he learn to do "German"?) and most of them have bad-guy sneers as well. The innocent bystanders all overdo their panicking enough to make you laugh. The good guy survives, amongst other things: * a 5" throwing knife buried hilt-deep in his shoulder - just pulls it out and seconds later is using the arm with no difficulty at all; * marines' machine-gun fire (I think someone referred to a .50) in the leg which he sorts out by tying a bandage around his pants leg and thereafter he barely has a limp; * several fist-fights in which he sustains multiple punches to the face as well as being run cranium-first into a door frame; * a fall, backwards, from what looks like the third floor, onto paving, without the slightest sign of a twisted ankle or any other such trifling inconvenience. The script has exactly 3 clever lines, the rest of the time it's all so dull and boring.

OK it's not all bad. Plummer does bring a certain class to his part, and is undoubtedly the best actor in this flick. Of course that doesn't say much, but he can do the callous villain without resorting to the ham techniques most of the villains use here. He delivers his "Ve haff vays and meance" type lines with some menace, but you are always aware you are watching Christopher Plummer acting the villain.

This movie is truly an awful waste of time. The acting, such as it is, is sort of 70's 007 movies wooden line delivery meets Bruce Lee's very obviously faked fight scenes, but it's not even anywhere near as good as either a Roger Moore 007 or a Bruce Lee film. Don't bother.
A: negative
Q: This was an absolutely terrible movie. Don't be lured in by Christopher Walken or Michael Ironside. Both are great actors, but this must simply be their worst role in history. Even their great acting could not redeem this movie's ridiculous storyline. This movie is an early nineties US propaganda piece. The most pathetic scenes were those when the Columbian rebels were making their cases for revolutions. Maria Conchita Alonso appeared phony, and her pseudo-love affair with Walken was nothing but a pathetic emotional plug in a movie that was devoid of any real meaning. I am disappointed that there are movies like this, ruining actor's like Christopher Walken's good name. I could barely sit through it.
A: negative