A nice idea this: a film special effects ace (Bryan Brown) is recruited by US intelligence to stage a fake assassination and help protect a criminal witness. The scheme seems to go wrong and the 'FX' man goes on the run from police and assassins alike. The set-pieces here are often ingenious, but at base this is a highly unlikely yarn whose characters remain remarkably dislikeable probably due both to Robert Mandel's untutored direction and a pedestrian script which somehow contrives to just miss the way real people might speak. The best performance is from Cliff De Young as a government agent whose smile is as sincere as one an undertaker might put on a corpse. But even the effects aren't all that special in this crisp, impersonal thriller that, apart from its four-letter words, runs like the efficient pilot for an off-beat TV series.


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