Well-constructed political thriller, brilliantly staged in Chicago doubling for Berlin and Washington as well as itself. Hackman, sidekick Franz (playing a cop!), and Cassidy all turn in effective performances, and Jones is nervously wired as a clearly malevolent bad actor, though Heard is too lightweight to play the main heavy. Sometimes the gritty realism of the settings drags the drama down into the mundane, the dialog is undistinguished, and motivations are incalculable. Nifty, overlooked.

Fine suspense thriller. Nifty surprises and violent plot twists add excitement.

The cast gives it some pizzazz, but basically this is a routine thriller

Crudely effective political thriller. (Plot Formula 1-B: the military can't sit by and watch a couple of Gorbachev and Bush look-alikes sign a disarmament pact; they've got to assassinate somebody.) The storyline is decently complicated, but the pace (to say nothing of the camerawork) is too pell-mell to take much notice.

It's a good Cold War era political thriller. I thought the cast was well chosen. Joanna Cassidy did a really great job, but I couldn't figure out if she was Gene Hackman's ex-wife or his sister. The movie was a little too slow for my tastes, but the story kept me pretty interested. There really was no mystery to the plot, but I had a good time with the movie while it lasted. Definitely worth watching again.