The problems was not that the movie was awful (apart from the typically wooden performance by Freddy Prinze, Jr. -- and why the heck has Matthew Lillard, who can actually ACT -- see "SLC Punk if you don't believe me -- spent so much of his career playing second banana to that meat-head?), but rather that the last three games are better MOVIES than the movie: they had better casts, better stories, better dialogue, even better visual effects (in the cut scenes, at least) and better musical scores! (I can still hum the main theme to "Heart of the Tiger," some six years after I last played it, and it still sends chills down my spine.) While Tcheky Karyo and David Warner put in fine performances as James "Paladin" Taggart and Admiral Sir Geoffrey Tolwyn, they could never match the terrific work of John Rhys-Davies and Malcolm MacDowell, who played Taggart and Tolwyn in the games. Nothing in the uninspired script compares with Tolwyn's sneering "Well, colonel, what would you aim for if you had the biggest gun in the universe?" Prince Thrakhath's "Heart of the Tiger" speech, or the not-so-friendly banter between Mark Hamill's Christopher Blair and Tom Wilson's "Maniac" Marshall. It might be worth a rental, if you love military SF, but if you're looking for something worth buying, get the games instead.