THE PACKAGE
A film review by Mark R. Leeper
Copyright 1989 Mark R. Leeper
Capsule review: Fast-paced if not entirely satisfying political thriller has Gene Hackman on the run from the Army and the police, trying to avert the sabotage of a nuclear disarmament treaty. Very reminiscent of other thrillers, especially SEVEN DAYS IN MAY, but with a few new wrinkles of its own. Rating: low +2.
THE PACKAGE is a neat little political thriller with a complex but still fairly coherent plot. The story is reminiscent of some of the better political thrillers from the early 1960s though most of all, and perhaps too closely, it parallels the plot of SEVEN DAYS IN MAY. THE PACKAGE is, however, not as cerebral a thriller as is SEVEN DAYS IN MAY, having less discussion of the political reasons for what is going on and substituting instead action and car chases. That choice makes the film more entertaining on one level but less involving on a deeper level. While in SEVEN DAYS IN MAY we are led to conclude that the real enemy is an age, in THE PACKAGE there is little doubt that the real enemy is a group of "bad guys" whose motives are all too quickly glossed over. That is just not as satisfying.
[Minor spoilers follow.]
The story begins at a disarmament summit meeting in East Berlin at which United States and Soviet diplomats agree to disarm and cooperate with each other. However, a dissenting group of high-ranking United States and Soviet military people decide they do not want to cooperate with each other, so they team up to sink the treaty so they can go back to distrusting each other. (Now that I think about it, that does seem a bit ironic.) Into this situation is dropped Johnny Gallagher (played by Gene Hackman), Gallagher is a career military man who becomes a cat's-paw for the conspirators. Also on hand is Tommy Lee Jones as a brawling soldier whom Gallagher must "escort" back to the United States and who clearly is not quite what he seems to be. It is not long before Gallagher is on the run from the army, the police, and the conspirators. He enlists the aid of his ex-wife Eileen Gallagher (played by Johanna Cassidy), also a career army officer. It is extremely refreshing, incidentally, to see an intelligent action character played by a woman over 40.
As political thrillers go, THE PACKAGE has a complex plot involving a wide spectrum of characters from the intelligence community to Communists to neo-Nazis. While the ultimate goal of the conspirators is not hard to guess, many of the details of their plot are unexpected enough to keep the viewer off-balance and guessing. I give it a low +2 on the -4 to +4 scale.
Mark R. Leeper
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