The Package (1989)

Sadly Over-hyped

Memorable, crazy movie

It isn't all that great, actually. Really cheesy and very predicable of how certain scenes are gonna turn play out. However, I guess that's the charm of it all, because I would consider this one of my guilty pleasures.

The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

This is a taut political thriller about the Cold War made and released just at the last moment, in 1989, after which these stories became passé. Gene Hackman plays a U.S. Army sergeant who becomes enmeshed in an international political and military conspiracy to prevent a peace treaty between the USA and the Soviet Union, and he and his wife, a U.S. Army Lieutenant-Colonel (played by Joanna Cassidy), have to run for their lives. On the one hand, they are trying to solve the conspiracy, but on the other hand they are trying to dodge all the nasty assassins who want to kill them. The film is well directed by Andrew Davis, who has directed numerous thriller and action films, such as the remake of the old TV series, the Harrison Ford version of THE FUGITIVE (1993). John Heard is icy cold as a scheming colonel who really works for the CIA. There is much attention given in this film to the CIA special ops people who are 'plants' inside the police, inside the Army, deeply throated and everywhere. Tommy Lee Jones plays the action villain, an expert sniper who doesn't care whom he kills as long as the pay is good. Dennis Franz plays Hackman's old chum from the Chicago Police who helps try to solve the conspiracy. The film is mostly set in Chicago, and the plan is to assassinate both the American president and the Russian leader who looks like Gorbachev. It is a nail-biting thriller, just the thing not to help you relax.

One of the biggest slams against this film is that it is supposedly dated in regards to the USSR and Cold War politics, but it takes place more during Perestroika and the end of the Cold War, so it retains a setting in a particular place in time. Perhaps it might be dated to those under 30, who can't appreciate the import of the times, but it, at least, offers a reasonable glimpse into its times.The Package tightly builds a portrait of a shadow force working against an elected government, so in that sense, it is timeless. It's been on constant rotation on the THIS channel, and a third watching showed me how much the writers thoroughly worked out the various threads ahead of time, providing not only a patsy for the assassination attempt, but a method by where he would have been arrested and documented as a white supremacist ahead of time.It's hard to go wrong in a film with Gene Hackman, Tommy Lee Jones, and Dennis Franz, who all implement the characters they're known for.My only real issue is at the end, when the narration implies that a public investigation exposed the conspiracy afterwards in Congress. We all know that isn't what generally happens. If anything, it makes the USA of 1990 look like a more moral country than it is now, probably because it was.It's not the most original conspiracy story I've ever seen, but it's well thought out and executed, with plenty of references to the Kennedy conspiracy/Manchurian Candidate and the principles make it constantly entertaining.

For about the first half of this movie, the story was very gripping. Tommy Lee Jones and Gene Hackman are both on top of their game. However, once Hackman and Cassidy's characters get to Chicago the film starts to drag and the ending gets predictable. Cassidy's character who started out interesting and intellingent doesn't get anything interesting to do toward the end of the film. The concept, an 80s version of the Kennedy Assisination with a twist is solid, but the movie just runs out of steam. If you like spy thrillers or the Kennedy conspiracies, you may find this movie somewhat entertaining. If you pass on watching this, you aren't really missing much either. Rating 6 of 10 stars.

I watched The Package Last night and was mildly entertained by it. Hackman was his usual best and Tommy Lee Jones was very entertaining though he was not given enough screen time. The director seemed more amused by Russian eye brows. That being said I would like to take issue with comments that it was outdated. It was not outdated for its time. That would be like saying MUNICH was outdated because it happened over thirty years ago.Get with it. If the story took place today ... yes it would be outdated. It didn't. It obviously took place in the mid to late 80s before the wall came down.Good pedestrian film.