This movie gets off to a great start, with a fun Mission Impossible style action scene that was probably quite cutting-edge for its day. It then proceeds to be quite captivating with easy viewing for the first third of the movie, largely thanks to the overwhelming majority of screentime being occupied by interactions between the very excellent Sean Connery and the alright Catherine Zeta-Jones. This was a cutting-edge thriller in its day, with plenty of action and a bit of mystery, but you could put Sean and Catherine in a movie of any genre and they’d probably make it work remarkably well.
The action gets a bit tense yet drowsy near the middle, as they’re trying to build suspense with the help of irritating white-noise sound effects. Fortunately the script soon livens up again, and the story gets increasingly spicy. After a while though, it gets a bit slow and drama-oriented again, and this is generally the trend of the remainder of the movie – intermittently strong & weak with intermittent action & drama scenes.
The action gets quite intense towards the end, then gets clever at the very end, rounding off a movie that would have probably been Below Average with random actors but turned out to be Above Average thanks to Sean Connery and Catherine Zeta-Jones.
Ving Rhames (the black hacker from Mission Impossible) also adds a lot of value to this movie, especially near the end. He initially plays Sean Connery’s supplier of gadgets, but eventually turns out to be an FBI agent.
Will Patton also does alright, as the boss of Catherine’s character early on in the movie, and one of the guys trying to catch her in the end.