Interesting film. On one level, hideously flawed. Denzel phones in his performance once again and there are huge holes in the plot and character development. The political sub-text is a joke. What a shock to suggest that there is a link between Corporate America and the Administration.

Two writers take the screenplay credit and it seems that they did not talk to each other. Denzel’s army major has some diverse duties. Lecturing boy scouts about the Medal of Honour, baby-sitting major generals at political cock-tail parties, Gulf War Syndrome victim, Ranger Captain, member of Delta Force and sniper. The bad guys have Denzel electronically tagged like an endangered Himalayan tiger but it is the good guys that have him under surveillance while he is trying to unravel his pesky reality-challenged nightmares. The good guys, deep undercover FBI agents also double as secret service personnel in the highly specialised Presidential Security detail.

The only performer that transcends the uneven screenplay is Meryl Streep. She is luminous and steals every scene that she is in. She absolutely nails the emotional bombast that passes for political dialogue these days. In a movie with an afro-American lead, she is another demon that scares the shit out of the U.S., a mother with real power.

On the other hand, in a contemporary film about brain-washing, perhaps the plot jumps and character inconsistencies are there on purpose. Perhaps they are there to illustrate how information is cynically manipulated these days. Do the troubling dualities of the characters represent the ability of elected officials to worship Janus by their daily endeavours?

While pondering over the puzzling disharmonies in this production, I began to wonder if the medium was indeed the message. Maybe Mr Demme has realised a subversive infrastructure which explores the issues in our Information Age. The readiness of people to accept shallow, glossly packaged visual data, the absence of critical analysis in main-stream media and 10 second sound-bites that masquerade as policy statements.

This movie has really stayed with me, left me feeling violated, manipulated — brain-washed really. How good is that? 4 Stars.