I thought I’d heard really bad things about this movie, but I must surely have been dreaming at the time. I was pretty damn impressed by the movie; it’s easily John Woo’s best since Face/Off. If anything brings the movie down, it’s the slightly dodgy casting of the leads. Ben Affleck just cannot sell this kind of material. He failed to inspire me in Armageddon and he’s not fun to watch here. He should stick to the lighter, Kevin Smith type, stuff. Uma Thurman, though terrific, was obviously bang in the middle of her torturous Kill Bill performance, and it shows, she really gives nothing away in this movie, just a pretty face. But maybe that’s intended.

Yes, I’m about to compare the movie to Hitchcock. To me, this is a remake of North by Northwest, and that’s why I liked it so much. He’s running, he doesn’t know why he’s running, and it doesn’t really matter why he’s running, it’s a modern nightmare. Uma is the classic Hitchcock blonde, really, both the dream and the foil at the same time. Add multiple agencies trying to catch our hero, and it’s a near perfect thriller. John Woo holds back on his usual tricks, though they’re all there (doves, slo-mo, two guns, etc), and even goes sort-of handheld and gritty at one point which took me by surprise. There’s even a comic sidekick, played excellently by Paul Giamatti, to keep things running along smoothly.

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