Greenmail

Spoilers

Stephen Baldwin played a environmentalist convicted of blowing stuff up who has to help the police find his serial bomber former colleague in this STV actioner.

There wasn't much characterisation and the plot wasn't anything that the average film watcher hasn't seen dozens of times before. The climax wasn't particularly climatic either.

Still, for a video movie it had its fair share of things blowing up which prevented it from being completely tedious. It had Tom Skerritt in too, who did his best but couldn't save this film from being more fodder for empty weekends. Watchable for one viewing.

4/10

Some films "know" they are bad, and they have fun with it. But Greenmail isn't fun, it's just average, in fact the most "average" film I have ever seen.

I just could not believe that the cops were supposed to be cops at any stage of the film. For one thing, they all look like they just went shopping at The Gap. They all have nice haircuts and manicures. They are all like fluffy cats.

The "police station" is actually the interior what looks to be Adobe Software's site in Fremont (if you know Seattle). My point is that it just simply doesn't look like a police station.

Now everyone just shopped at the Gap and they're all in their cubicles at the software company (err.. police station). Some strange faxes show up from the mystery bomber, a la "exposition". The cops read the faxes. It's in a nice font, since we are at Adobe Software, anyways. Boy, are the cops scared. One nearly drops his coffee mug.

Ok, there was one part where I really laughed. Basically they had to defuse a bomb, and the lead Gap-clothes cop says, "don't worry, I've done this before". She walks up to the bomb. Now all of them are supposed to be wearing these visors that cover their heads. Now OBVIOUSLY if there was a bomb nearby, wouldn't you want your visor down? But they are all just hanging out by the bomb, having a good ol' time. In other words, they aren't scared, they don't have their visors down, in fact some of the extras are just kind of hanging out near the bomb... which means NO DRAMA.

Wouldn't a real bomb squad be called in? Wouldn't the real bomb defuser be in an elaborate bomb-proof suit, while everyone else was a safe distance back? Wouldn't there be a little bit of tension.. at all?

It has some wonderful, experienced actors in it, but they cannot save it. Unfortunately the lead actress (forget her name) just cannot play a cop - especially a tough, bomb-defusing cop.

The script is laden with too much exposition (a ridiculous amount of exposition, in fact), and dialogue that consistently derails any dramatic tension.

Even the "prisoner", Baldwin, wears an orange fuzzy sweater from The Gap instead of a prison/jail jumpsuit. COME ON! These are supposed to be talented actors.

They had a large enough budget for explosives and decent actors, so I don't think the faults in this film can be chalked up to "low budget"-ness.

The difference between a great director and a mediocre director? See "traffic", and watch the scenes that can be done on a low budget. Compare. Contrast. And realize that Soderbergh deserves his success, while the director of "Greenmail" is a very average director.

Ok, to be fair, they make an effort with the gunfights, explosions, and so on.. but overall it is just one average boring film. Blah.

As a card-carrying member of a half-dozen or more environmental groups, I was attracted to `Greenmail's' advertised plot about the mismatched union of an activist and an ATF agent to stop an environmentalist gone over the edge into a spree of fatal bombings.

Alas, the environmental angle is nothing more than an excuse for a very standard genre thriller where the villain blows up a lot of people. Even the potentially interesting Seattle setting (actually, the ever-popular Vancouver, save for a few establishing shots) is not utilized to any particular advantage.

The competent cast does what it can with a basically uninteresting script and surprisingly languid direction. What suspense there is consists of far too many scenes of people hesitantly snipping wires on bombs which either blow up or do not with fair predictability.

Too bad. There was the opportunity for some genuine ideological conflict between the two main protagonists and a more thoughtful motivation for the cardboard villain. The one very minor plot twist is reduced to a simple throwaway line because we really don't know much about why the characters do what they do to their friends or to others.

Just another average(made for TV) movie with Stephen Baldwin(as we expect from him)It has some nice explosions but overall its a bit shallow. The acting is just above average(although its clearly they all did it for the cash only). the story is not really exciting and has no surprises(yeah, all the clichés off bombing movies are in it). i must say i've seen much better(backdraft) but also much worse(ticker).The directing is just very average but for a B movie good enough! They picked some nice areas to film(I think it's filmed in Canada) So if you ain't got nottin to do and it's on TV you could give it a try!! But only if you have really nottin to do,OK!!

Shallow and stupid movie with multitude of semantic mistakes by director/producer. While seeing I laughed many times, especially near to its end and I'm sure that specialists would treat this movie like a comedy from the beginning. I recommend you not to rent/buy this movie - better give charity to a poor :)