I didn't find much "thrill" in this thriller but that doesn't mean it isn't worth watching. I loved the story about the blind woman who gets a transplant and can see for the first time since she was a little girl. I like her strong will and defiance and her ironically delicate job as a violinist. I like the way she deals with her troubled past and can just announce to strangers what has happened to her. I like her stormy relationship with a jaded bachelor cop almost past his prime. All of this was told and played brilliantly. I wish that they'd just left the thriller aspect out and concentrated on these two believable, real and interesting characters. That was the movie to make. Stowe is particularly good in these kinds of roles and I count myself as a fan after seeing this and Twelve Monkeys.
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vivesi-13 May 2003
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romanorum128 October 2009When Emma Brody was a child her mother smashed her face into a mirror for using Mom's makeup. The result was blindness. Two decades later the independent Emma is a fiddler in the Drover's rock band. Meanwhile an ophthalmologist has received corneas that originated from a young woman who died in an auto accident. He calls Emma, who soon has cornea transplants and has her sight somewhat restored. She still cannot focus too clearly, and also has "retroactive vision," a (supposed) post-surgical delayed reaction. She sees images not instantaneously but later, and sometimes a day after the fact! Emma is not yet ready for eyeglasses or contact lenses, which will improve her vision, but only to 20/50.
Now a young lady is murdered in her apartment in Emma's building. Did Emma see the murderer leave the scene of the crime? Although she cannot discern very well, she does remember the distinct "soapy" smell of the murderer. Apparently he detests blood, and thus thoroughly scrubs it away. Later she detects the same smell in her eye surgeon's office. Is he the killer? There are other murders, and some elements of danger. An anxious situation occurs when the vulnerable Emma notices two eyes drawn in lipstick on her inside clothes closet mirror. Another is her entry aboard a nearly empty Chicago El commuter train at night.
Emma's best friend is her loyal and spirited golden retriever, Ralph, who is fun to watch. Soon Emma develops a rather rocky love relationship with investigating detective John Halstrom, whose apathetic actions make him none too likable. Yet the two leads are inevitably drawn together. The police, lacking empathy and misunderstanding the cynical woman, act pretty much the same. They do their jobs, and that's it. Although Emma is strong, her handicap presents a disadvantage, and the killer is closing in. Nonetheless, he does not reckon on the mettle that was bubbling underneath the tough woman all along.
Madeline Stowe was actually well into her thirties when she played the role of a young woman in her late-twenties. She gets away with the part, though, because of her good looks, energy, and nice performance. She certainly creates sympathy and makes us root for her to turn out well. Recommended. -
xredgarnetx31 December 2007Madeline Stowe of "The Last of the Mohicans" fame stars in BLINK as a feisty musician who undergoes a new type of eye surgery to restore her vision, lost in childhood at the hands of an abusive mom. As her vision slowly returns, she runs afoul of a killer who is convinced she has gotten a good look at him, and is now after her. She tells the cops, who not surprisingly laugh at her. The irony is, she only sees the killer in a sort of surreal way, with the camera serving as Stowe's vision and showing us what amounts to little more than phantasms. She also suffers from mental time gaps with her returning vision. Stowe ends up falling for burly cop Aidan Quinn, who decides she's telling the truth and protects her. There's a nice trick at the very end involving the killer. Suspenseful and stylish for its time, with a thoughtful performance by Stowe.
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movieman918 February 1999There have been a load of psychological thrillers made in this decade, often heaped with sex and gratuitous violence. BLINK uses these familiar conventions, but becomes a powerhouse suspense flick with its convincing characters, ominous camera shots, and beautifully written script. Madeline Stowe stars as a blind violinist for a clubhouse band who is given her sight back with a fortunate (or unfortunate) corneal transplant. She has difficulty adjusting to the seeing world, having recurring images flashed back at her at inopportune times. Even with this handicap, she believes she has been an eyewitness to an escaping murderer, but her biggest feat is to convince the police department of her credibility. Aidan Quinn (an under-rated talent) plays the Chicago cop who believes her claim and falls in love with her in the process. What really stands in BLINK is the honesty in the leads' emotions, afraid to care again after the conventional one-night-stand. The atmosphere is most suspenseful, using Stowe's actual eyesight as a mystery in itself. Amidst all the crap that has been radiated from these types of films, BLINK delivers something credible for a change. Rating: Three stars.
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caslynh10 January 2008First, I have not seen the movie all the way through, but what I watched I liked. I am a bartender so I work late. I came home to find it on the television. So, I got on IMDb to find out what movie it was and low and behold, this is it. I was reading the summary and I don't know if this counts for much, but someone wrote that she was a cellist. Sadly, whomever that was needs to visit a music class because the violin is a far thing from the cello. But to continue, from what I watched, I was caught up in this movie. Someone commented that this was not a "thriller" but it definitely was for me. I am a woman and live alone with a dog and from the time she hears the noise upstairs to the next morning, when she has the flashback of the man in her apartment, well, it really scared the crap out of me. I normally don't get scared at movies but this one definitely got my heart rate up and I could hardly get to sleep. So, I will be heading to Blockbuster, when I can find someone to spend the night, to finish watching this thriller, even if it is so only to me.
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Darbs1 December 2000A good, absorbing thriller with an unusual idea at its core, "Blink" also enjoys the benefits of good acting and direction, and some truly heartstopping scenes. What struck me also was its success in making the audience share the "Emma Brody's" confusion when faced with the the sights of the city around her for the first time in years. The very last scene is, perhaps, a bit pat, but we've had our fun by then and can indulge the filmmakers here. Recommended.
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hitchcockthelegend22 August 2011Blink is directed by Michael Apted and written by Dana Stevens. It stars Madeleine Stowe, Aidan Quinn, James Remar, Paul Dillon, Peter Friedman, Bruce A. Young and Laurie Metcalfe. Music is by Brad Fiedel and cinematography by Dante Spinotti. Story sees Stowe as Emma Brody, who after being blind for 20 years receives a double cornea transplant that mostly restores her sight. However, she's subject to something known as "retroactive vision" which means that what her blurry vision at first sees doesn't register to the brain sometime later. A problem, now, because there has been a murder committed upstairs at her apartment complex and she's the only "eye" witness to the murderer.
It's all set up to be a standard woman in peril thriller, the kind that drops into the cinema on a yearly basis. But thanks to some technical smarts and a terrific performance by Stowe, Blink is one of the better films from this particular sub-genre. It's a bit saggy in the middle, where, probably thanks to the success of Basic Instint and Sea of Love in the five years previously, Apted and co try to turn it into an "erotic" thriller as Stowe and Quinn's surly copper form a relationship, but it's genuinely tense and the novelty of Emma's unusual affliction never wears thin.
Apted and his team have devised a unique visual effect that lets us see the world through Emma's unusual eyes, and the result is very unsettling. Blurry focus blends with wobbly vision and this allows for scary moments that stretch the concept across the films running time. It's of course a hokey premise, and the formula at the core of the plot is nothing new, but the character of Emma, coupled with her "affliction" is. Emma is no poor victim looking for sympathy, she's spunky, sexy and not suffering fools gladly. She lives as an independent, plays fiddle in a Celtic rock band (The Drovers playing themselves) and is full of feminine whiles. Stowe really gets to grips with the character and convinces fully. Quinn is OK, plays sarcastic and moody with ease, while Apted has a keen eye for the Chicago locale and Spinotti's photography is gorgeous in colour tones.
It needed a better, more frantic, ending, and that over played mid-section stops it from being from the top draw of thrillers, but otherwise it's well worth a look for potential first time viewers. 7/10 -
There was no 'story box' in this film, but there certainly was a mystery - a mystery surrounding who was the killer. But not just that, but was there a killer. And the main witness was a woman who's vision wasn't great and was a new recipient of a cornea transplant.
Throughout the viewer has to question whether there actually is a killer. You might suspect the doctor for good reason. Maybe one of the cops as well. The writers certainly keeps you in long enough to discover who the killer is and if the formerly blind woman actually saw him or her.
Overall, its a fairly good movie. Not too thrilling, but enough to watch again someday. "B-" -
**SPOILER ALERT** Somewhat far-fetched urban thriller about this blind violinist Emma Brody, Madeleine Stowe, who gets a sight-restoring cornea transplants and ends up seeing her next door neighbor Valerie Wheaton, Joy Gregory, murdered.
Going to the police to report Valeries murder Emmer is treated as if she's some kind of nut-case because of her claiming that her new restored eyesight has her see thing not only out of focus but out of their usual time frame! As if they come to her attention hours if not days after they happen. That's why she can't pinpoint the exact time that Valerie was murdered! With Valerie's body later being found exactly where Emma predicted it would be the police finally start to take her seriously but only for the wrong reasons. With Det. Hallstrom, Aidan Quinn, put on the case he seems to be more interested in getting it on with the pretty and head strong violinist then finding Valerie's killer. The killer who we soon find out mistook Valerie for Emma the person he really was out to do in!
All the pieces of this mysterious puzzle come together towards the end of the movie with the revelations by Emma's eye surgeon Dr. Ryan Pierce, Peter Friedman, of who's corneas were implanted into Emma's sightless eyes. Eyes who's sight Emma lost when as an eight-year-old girl when she had her skull smashed into a mirror by her outraged mom for daring to use her lipstick! As it turns out it's Det. Hallstrom's partner Det. Ridgely, James Remar, who by doing his job and not always trying to get into Emma's pants finally managed-with Hallstrom's help-cracked the case. That's before Emma almost ended up being the killer's next victim!
Following the film's confusing and complicated storyline was like navigating you way through a US Marine or Navey Seal obstacle course. It was actress Madeleine Stowe gutsy and tightrope-like performance that made you want to sit through the movie at all. Not in if she'll survive being killed but why she's being targeted to be murdered in the first place! -
Caps Fan23 October 2008DVDs are wonderful things. Picking up this one recently gives me an opportunity to review yet another favorite from way back when.
Madeleine Stowe features as Emma Brody, a gifted violinist living in Chicago, who was blinded as a young girl by her abusive mother. The story proper opens with her receiving corneal transplants after 20 or so years of blindness. This restores her sight, but her mind is so overwhelmed by the resulting flood of images that it operates a kind of delay in its processing so that she only perceives certain things some time after actually seeing them. One of the images so processed is that of a possible murderer
I have no idea whether this phenomenon is actually possible medically, but I didn't care much. The story is otherwise rather conventional, though its treatment is vivid. British-born Michael Apted knows his stuff and conveys a startling impression of Emma's situation and the Chicago she lives in.
Stowe turns in a convincing, if sometimes rather shrill, performance, while Aidan Quinn is also good as the detective more or less in charge of the case, with whom Emma has a romance of sorts. The supporting players, including the excellent James Remar, are effective. I must admit though that the expression "red shirt" crossed my mind when a not very bright uniformed officer (named Crowe and played by Matt Roth) was assigned to keep an eye on Emma. My suspicions were more than justified.
A satisfying thriller nevertheless adequate plot, excellent playing, good music, and lively direction. Who could want more?
Rating: 7/10. -
The_Void28 November 2007The main reason I saw this film was not because I thought the plot sounded interesting, or even because of the fact that it stars the beautiful Madeleine Stowe; the reason I saw it is purely down to the fact that I remembered seeing posters for it in the video store when I was a kid. With such a nonchalant viewing reason behind me, it probably wont come as a surprise that I wasn't expecting a lot from this film; and it's a good job as Blink is a highly disappointing thriller with numerous problems and very little to recommend it for. The plot is not particularly original, and focuses on the idea of a blind woman in peril. There is a slight twist on this theme; as the woman in this film is not quite blind; in fact, she is the benefactor of a breakthrough 'eye transplant', which re-enables her sight after over twenty years of being blind. A side effect of this treatment is the fact that she sees some things 'by memory', and this is a problem when she apparently witnesses a murder as she's not sure if it's real or just flashback...
The film would be described a 'psychological thriller', and the reason why these films are often hit and miss is the main problem with this one. A film like this really needs a central character that is easy to get into; and while I believe that Madeleine Stowe is a great actress, she's not given the room to do much with this role. The plotting is not good at all, and is often all over the place; and too much of the film focuses on the tentative (and boring) relationship between the central character and a policeman on the case. This relationship feels extremely phoney, and since it makes up a large proportion of the running time of the film; it becomes a pretty big problem. There are a few decent scenes; Stowe is very good despite the poor material, though I would have preferred a lot more suspense, given that this is really supposed to be a thriller. The ending is pulled off fairly nicely, though its impact is lessened by the tepid film that preceded it. For a far better take on a similar theme, see the fantastic 'Wait Until Dark', and skip this. -
alli_katz2 June 2001I always wanted to use that word, and in this movie it describes exactly how it made me feel all while I was watching it. Very exciting stuff. Terrific chemistry between Aidan Quinn, who has never been more handsome and compelling, and Madeline Stowe, who is really magnetic in the lead role as the patient-heroine. I don't know why more people don't talk about it more often.
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DennisLittrell7 October 2001(Note: Over 500 of my movie reviews are now available in my book "Cut to the Chaise Lounge or I Can't Believe I Swallowed the Remote!" Get it at Amazon.)
As thrillers go this is above average. True, the premise is a "been there, done that" sort of thing with a romance between the detective and the potential victim with a serial killer in the shadows, etc. However there is just enough originality here added to solid performances by the stars to make it worthwhile.
Aidan Quinn (no relation to Anthony) plays a cute and quirky detective in the Windy City on the trail of a budding serial killer. Madeleine Stowe is a blue grass/Irish violinist blind since she was eight. As the movie opens she is about to get cornea transplants, and before long she can see, sort of, which is important since she has become a witness to murder. Some of what she sees are flashbacks to the day before, which makes her a problem witness for the police. Some other flashbacks are to when her mother smashed her face into a mirror for playing with her make-up. How sick is that? I presume this was dreamed up by Dana Stevens, who gets credit for the script, which is a kind of mishmash of clever lines and shlock dialogue as though two different people (or half a dozen) wrote it.
Michael Apted's direction is not inspired although it isn't all that bad either. But he doesn't develop the serial killer's personality, and so the weirdo's motivation seems a bit of a stretch. Also undeveloped is the doctor whose love for Stowe is unrequited. The main thing is the erotic chemistry between Stowe and Quinn, and the personality of Stowe's character, which is original and the best thing in the movie. I think this would have received a better reception had Quinn's character fallen in madly in love with the violinist. As it plays, we are not sure whether he really cares or not.
Madeleine Stowe is sexy and does a good job in a demanding role, probably the most demanding of her modest career. See it for her. -
sarkara23 February 2021The lead female character is the most annoying character ever portrayed on screen. I guess the writer and director wanted a strong, independent woman, but they ended up with a cynical, lonely and sarcastic what-they-call-a-female-dog. I'm half way into the movie, and if I hadn't rented it, would've quit long ago.
The others are no better. The movie opens with the lead male stripping naked and shaking his a$$ trying to get a smile from a violinist, who happens to be our annoying-as-hell lead female. And guess what the lead male does for a living? He's a detective. I bet we can all sleep a little better knowing this dude is on the job. -
Morvyn6 February 1999This film is among some of the best thrillers written with a good cast and a decent reason to doubt the main witness. Recommended!
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FlashCallahan8 April 2012Emma is a girl in her 20s who has been blind for 20 years.
A new type of eye operation partially restores her sight, but she is having problems: sometimes she doesn't "remember" what she's seen until later.
One night she is awakened by a commotion upstairs. Peering out of her door, she sees a shadowy figure descending the stairs.
Convinced that her neighbour has been murdered, she approaches the police, only to find that she is unsure if it was just her new eyes playing tricks on her....
It's not a surprise that this didn't make much of an impact when released. These sort of thrillers were released every other month in the nineties, bu the inclusion of eye surgery is surely a novelty.
It is, but thats where all the novel ideas end.
We have Aiden Quinn, the lead detective, and guess who he ends up with?
Stowe has a guide dog, guess what happens to it?
And so on and so on.
There is a little bit of a twist come the end, but it doesn't really matter, all the blanks are filled in and it doesn't really bother the grey matter.
Stowe is good in her role, and it has to be her best performance, its a shame she never really picked up better scripts, could she really has screen presence.
See it if you like thrillers, you don't expect to be surprised too much... -
Hitchcoc16 November 2010This is one of those movies that works if you don't take five minutes to think about it. It all starts with the condition that she has. At best, this stretches the bounds of reality. For the retina to replace the faces of those encountered with those encountered at a previous time is absurd. Chances are those faces would appear above a fireplace or on a sidewalk. There were these transitional scenes where a face would morph into the bad guy and back to a policeman or something. This young woman should have had an incredible amount of therapy, both physical and psychological to deal with here environment. All that aside, the whole thing is hard to swallow. Quinn's character is such an ass. He dismisses her so quickly. She was right to take on the police because they are utterly incompetent. But why this guy gets a chance, I don't know. I guess she and love are both blind. Anyway, enough said. I felt that this is one of those movies where the writer said, "Let's see. If there was this woman who had this eye condition (which I just read about in Reader's Digest, what could happen to her? It's just that at that point it's about an abusive romance and not much else.
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SnoopyStyle25 April 2015Emma Brody (Madeleine Stowe) is a blind violinist in a rock band. Police detective John Hallstrom (Aidan Quinn) makes a fool of himself dancing in front of her. She gets an operation partly repairing her vision. However her sight is distorted and delayed. Dr. Pierce takes a liking to her. Late one night, she is awaken by somebody at the stairs. However her vision is delayed and the next morning, she thinks the criminal was in her room. She goes to the police but Hallstrom and the boys laugh her off. Then they find her dead neighbor.
Madeleine Stowe is amazing and her character is compelling. She's brash and cool. The premise is interesting. Director Michael Apted gives a good sense of her visual confusion. However the killer murder mystery doesn't have a good payoff. This could have been much better. -
hfk27 May 2003I'm surprised by some of the negative reviews: this film was suspenseful and, at times, genuinely scary. But, then again, some of the IMDB reviews of "Sixth Sense" were so scathing that I nearly passed-by watching one of the best movies of the past few years. While this is certainly no "Sixth Sense", it is a well-made film. The entire cast does a a fine job, the dialog is well-written (although I don't care for the protagonist's strong profanity: it sounds especially disgusting coming from a female's mouth), the cinematography is excellent, and the plot twists and turns remain sufficiently believable. I've given it a 7 out of 10.
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"Blink" is a less-than mediocre thriller whose director hoped that casting two of the big box office stars of the 90's would carry the film in spite of its awfulness. It doesn't work.
I always try to analyze bad movies: Is it a bad script, bad acting, bad direction, bad cinematography, or a combination of elements? In this case, I thought the direction was pretty good, and the camera's portrayal of Chicago is actually quite good.
The script and the acting--that's another thing. The story is plausible enough to maintain your credulity--at first. But it rapidly degenerates--as per the usual Hollywood formula--into the "cop falling in love with a beautiful female witness who's a potential murder victim" cliche. And things go downhill from there.
Madeline Stowe was the Hollywood bimbo du jour in the 90's. I have no idea if she can really act. But watching her try to pull off the role of Emma, a feisty, independent blind girl, is embarrassing. Even before her vision is magically restored by eye surgery, her makeup and hair are always perfect. And her fierce independence eventually vanishes after she meets the investigating cop, played by Aidan Quinn. That's what females are supposed to do when Aidan Quinn wants to take them to bed: turn into needy damsels in distress. Give me a break.
Quinn's performance barely rises barely to the level of a cop in any given TV series. He's got no nuance, no facial or body language, and he delivers his lines like a kid in a high school play.
The best actor in "Blink" is Ralph, Emma's seeing eye dog. He's fantastic. He has everything: facial expression and body language, and he's totally believable. I'm serious. Watch him closely. Spoiler alert: He is seriously injured about halfway into the film, and he disappears into an animal hospital. At that point, the film becomes 80 percent less interesting. Thankfully, he returns at the end. Too bad we don't get to see more of him. When a dog is the best actor in a movie, the movie is a dog. -
baechter13 July 2015This movie is disgusting and repugnant on so many levels. I feel like suing the production company. It is difficult to describe how terrible the cops are in this movie. They are portrayed as completely unprofessional and abusive to women. It destroys any credibility this movie might have had. Madeleine is great but the other actors are awful. This is like a really bad B movie. Who wrote and directed this? A five year old? The movie begins with a cop stripping. How pathetic and ridiculous! And what is that, Celtic music? Give me a break! Then our star actress witnesses a murder after getting her sight back. This could be a decent plot line, but not so fast. She goes to the cops and initially they don't believe her. Wow, how original. Nobody has ever seen that in a plot line before. These idiots, that are poorly acted, are extremely abusive, and their language is unnecessarily vulgar. When a movie is devoid of any redeeming quality, it is easy to just throw in a bunch of curse words. The star cop is physically and verbally abusive, he assaults Emma more than once and somehow we are supposed to believe that he is her love interest? The kid whose mother is killed isn't even upset and he gives the cop some campy, sarcastic line. When do I stop throwing up?
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hu67511 October 2006An Talented Musician (Madeleine Stowe) is having her eyes restored after twenty years of blindness. After the successful operation, she's becomes a key witness to a murder but her brain is having trouble to make a visual information on the killer. The police thinks, she's a crackpot but expect for one detective (Aidan Quinn) is trying to help her.
Directed by Michael Apted (Coal's Miner Daughter, Gorialls in the Mist, Enigma) made an intriguing suspense thriller that is well made, funny, entertaining & thanks to the sharp performances by Stowe and Quinn makes this one more than an enjoyable film. Perphas it's a bit heavy handed for some tastes, because of Stowe's character has "retroactive vision" problem. In real life "retroactive vision" isn't fictional as some believed. There's something unique to this movie than the usual woman in jeopardy pictures.
DVD has an sharp anamorphic Widescreen (2.35:1) transfer (Also in Pan & Scan) and an good-Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround Sound. DVD's only feature is the original theatrical trailer. This film didn't find much success at the box office, despite being well received by the critics. This certainly play well on Video. This picture has excellent cinematography by Dante Spinotti (The Haunting "1999", Manhunter, Red Dragon) and this was certainly one of the few (and best) underrated thrillers that came out in the early 1990's. Super 35. (****/*****). -
view_and_review22 June 2020I have a wonderful idea for making better movies. It's simple yet brilliant: money back guarantee. It's a tried and true formula. That way Hollywood will stop releasing the same recycled garbage with different wrappings.
A woman named Emma Brody (Madeleine Stowe) was blind since childhood. She got something of her vision back after a corneal operation. The only problem is that now there are these occasional delays with her vision, as in she'll see a person up to a day after they've been in a place. They used some medical mumbo jumbo to explain it, but it's just that: mumbo jumbo. I wasn't put off by that at all, I was actually a bit intrigued, except that it then became hallucinations almost everywhere at any given time whether the person had been there or not.
When a woman was murdered in her building she claimed to have seen the killer the morning after the killing. He appeared clearly to her in one of her hallucinations. The problem is that she can't see correctly except when she's hallucinating. In real time her vision is blurry. Then she kept having hallucinations of just him at various places.
The cop assigned to the case was a cop who had stripped nude to get her attention in the first scene of the movie. Mind you, she was blind at that time. Eventually, the two become involved because there's never been a cop movie in which the cop gets involved with the witness. And getting involved with a blind witness has definitely never been done **ahem! "Jennifer 8" ahem!** Because she was a "witness" and because the two were having sex we knew that she would also be a potential victim of the killer. That she was.
This movie lost what little traction it may have had at the start. Beyond the not-so-fresh plot, Emma Brody was plain annoying. Her voice and her attitude were exasperating. I suppose that's why they gave us a gratuitous boob shot---to make the men more amenable to her character. Who knows, I fast-forwarded through the rote sex scenes anyway. As I said, I should get a refund. I may have only paid $1.99 to watch this movie, but I still want my $1.99 back! -
Myrzan29 October 2005..irrational, illogical behavior (running away from your police escort while being stalked by a killer ring a bell, anyone?-) and general foolishness. I first thought I'd not watch this but then I read a positive comment on the movie here on IMDb which claimed that though this might mostly be a pretty average movie there also was something special about it. Well, to me this felt pretty much the usual cannon fodder.
I think this could have been a decent movie. The basic plot is OK. However, they didn't make it so, but instead so-so, so towards the end of the movie the only thing that kept me watching this was that I wanted to see how badly it would stall, hoping that that it would get bad enough to be actually funny. It didn't. Instead it had some filler arguments which I particularly hate in a movie (you know those scenes where two or more previously rationally behaving people suddenly start behaving like they have PMS).
Not good enough to enjoy and not really bad enough to be campy. IMO a waste of time.
My voting history should be available here:
http://www.imdb.com/mymovies/list?l=10127200