Quite watchable for most of the time, this is all too often a ponderous and portentous thriller, with an exaggerated sense of its own weight, that looks like a Chuck Norris cast-off. Scott Glenn even assumes the Norris mien of bearded unkemptness as the soldier of fortune whose relationship with the 12-year-old daughter of a rich American family in Italy leads him into a crazed vendetta when she is kidnapped for a million dollar ransom. Jade Malle (daughter of the late director Louis) is quite winning as the girl, but the film is weakly scripted and put together in such a way as to remind you that directors in films no longer have a studio at their shoulder to tactfully suggest, at some stage in the rushes, that they might be making a hash of what is basically a quite workable concept. The opening and kidnap scenes are striking, but Glenn has little chance to impress his personality on the vengeance-seeker and little else in the film suggests the imagination needed to bring the project to life.

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