THE SHADOW CONSPIRACY
A film review by Walter Frith
Copyright 1997 Walter Frith
What can you say about the director of 'Rambo: First Blood Part II' (1985) and 'Cobra' (1986) making a movie about a major U.S. government conspiracy? Well, not much. 'Shadow Conspiracy' is a laughably bad and totally far fetched piece of wretched garbage which is an insult to those who believe in on going conspiracies in government world wide. Charlie Sheen stars as a White House advisor to the President who becomes gains knowledge of a massive government plot to commit treason. The movie has absolutely no depth of focus and instead of building the story slowly in a fascinating manner piece by piece, it instead dives right in and is nothing more than a tedious chase picture. Sheen is suspicious of the White House chief of staff (Donald Sutherland) who may or may not be the bad guy. Linda Hamilton rounds out the major members of the cast as a reporter who aids Sheen in the run for his life. Even sillier than this, there is a nasty hitman for hire who parades himself throughout the movie in a nameless and speechless manner picking off people like insects and a scene near the beginning of 'Shadow Conspiracy' is straight out of 'Three Days of the Condor' (1975). Director George P. Cosmatos is not a filmmaker suited for this type of material. The unbelievable twists and turns in this movie have no credibility and one scene involving a toy plane rigged with a murdering machine gun mechanism had me almost walking out on the film. Sam Waterston ('The Killing Fields') gives a career worst performance as the President and Ben Gazzara is equally stiff and dull as the Vice President. There isn't one single redeeming thing about this movie and for all those people who complained that Oliver Stone's 'JFK' (1991) was an indictment of the system blown out of proportion, 'Shadow Conspiracy' will only serve to double that movie's stature as a great film.
OUT OF 5> zero
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