This movie just tries to create an atmosphere full of conspiracy, paranoia and so on. It simply tries to shock. It's not the way a splatter horror picture is shocking people, but finally it's the same cheap level. This movie does not deliver many explanations for the strange things going on in it. But it delivers a couple of unintentionally funny or implausible scenes like the boat explosion with only one survivor (surprise, surprise who the survivor is...), the stereotype bar brawl between the lead character and the sheriff's assistant or the plane scene with minutes full of....: nothing. One long shot after the other. You see stewardesses doing their job. It looks like you should start being scared about what's going on, but you aren't... and after that plane scene the overlong style is still killing this movie more and more, slowly until its end. Only because nothing happens or things happen very slowly a movie isn't exciting or creates suspense automatically. On the other hand the movie steadily tries to submit to audience there are some very SERIOUS things going on out there behind that what we call 'reality', but the problem is, the movie itself makes it difficult to take it serious.

I really enjoyed 'All the President's Men', but this one here is so hypothetic it can never work without a good style of narration which DOES deliver explanations and creates suspense in an interesting way but not with a couple of overlong scenes in a row. I liked the way Hume Cronyn and especially old Western veteran Jim Davis played their parts and the manipulative scene in which Frady is confronted with a collage of pictures and keywords, but this is nearly everything about this movie that was interesting to me. It starts quite well, but after the murder case which leads Frady into his investigations, in other words: after 15 or 20 minutes, the movie is getting bumptious. There are dozens of more informative conspiracy movies...after having seen this one you just ask yourself: What have I been told by this movie?