It's a good premise - how far should we go to get information that will prevent a terrorist outrage? And the stakes are upped by making it 3 nuclear bombs due to go off, hidden in warehouses in America.
Samuel Jackson is a brutal information extractor/torturer. Carrie Moss is the FBI agent confronted with this ruthless approach that the government keeps secret.
But it seems that the makers assumed an exciting premise would make an exciting film with little more effort.
Jackson's ruthlessness is portrayed as hard won wisdom. He behaves like he's a psychopath, but actually it's just that he has a clear vision of the answer to how far you should go. He refers to one of the army's original interrogators as a 'petty sadist'. Not like Jackson who has a job to do and does it without letting his emotions interfere.
But this is so Jackson can to-and-fro with Carrie-Ann Moss. To my mind an extra dimension could easily have been added by Jackson's character actually getting excited by his torture work. Then we would have a mixed motive - of the authorities - as they would watch Jackson having joker-esquire fun with his victims.
And Moss is solid but boring. Yes, the woman is the one dragging her heels, unable to compute that the suffering of one man can be offset against the suffering of many, many more.
Just to keep us interested, why not have a woman as the torturer rather than the nurturer?
All-in-all, a bit of heavy handed pontificating, that seems to be there to make us think. Thanks for that.
Watchable, but far from great.
Samuel Jackson is a brutal information extractor/torturer. Carrie Moss is the FBI agent confronted with this ruthless approach that the government keeps secret.
But it seems that the makers assumed an exciting premise would make an exciting film with little more effort.
Jackson's ruthlessness is portrayed as hard won wisdom. He behaves like he's a psychopath, but actually it's just that he has a clear vision of the answer to how far you should go. He refers to one of the army's original interrogators as a 'petty sadist'. Not like Jackson who has a job to do and does it without letting his emotions interfere.
But this is so Jackson can to-and-fro with Carrie-Ann Moss. To my mind an extra dimension could easily have been added by Jackson's character actually getting excited by his torture work. Then we would have a mixed motive - of the authorities - as they would watch Jackson having joker-esquire fun with his victims.
And Moss is solid but boring. Yes, the woman is the one dragging her heels, unable to compute that the suffering of one man can be offset against the suffering of many, many more.
Just to keep us interested, why not have a woman as the torturer rather than the nurturer?
All-in-all, a bit of heavy handed pontificating, that seems to be there to make us think. Thanks for that.
Watchable, but far from great.