Back from the realm of the 'B' movies, Val Kilmer stars in this mystery, action thriller written and directed by David Mamet. This movie is very exciting until the last 30 minutes when it spoon feeds you the plot twists instead of letting Kilmer's character discover them on his own. This movie went from a must see to pretty good because of that problem.

The movie is a story about the apparent abduction of the teenage daughter of the President of the United States, played by Ed O'Neil (that's right Al Bundy is moving up in the world). The Secret Service, FBI and everyone else are on the hunt for the missing girl, including a military spy/soldier/secret agent Scott, played by Val Kilmer, he and his partner Curtis, played by Derek Luke-Antoine Fisher, follow the pieces to and discover that she was abducted by a overseas prostitution ring. The story is follows Scott and Curtis finding the clues to find the girl. Then the movie has its first twist when the daughter is found dead in the ocean even though all the evidence points to her getting shipped off the Arab country of The United Arab Emirates. Then Curtis is killed when he tries to convince Scott that something is not right. Here we are at the epicenter of tension and drama, and does Mamet take advantage of it? NO! Here enters some lame secret service woman that spoon feeds Scott all of the details of what's going on, and the movie goes from borderline brilliant to ho-hum. Then Scott finds the daughter, who is played by Kristen Bell who has done nothing but TV shows, and after listening to her for five minutes you wish Val would give her back. Then William H. Macy shows up playing a guy named Stoddard who works for the president as a tough guy, which doesn't work. Like I said this movie went from great to boring quickly.

The acting in the movie goes from excellent, Val Kilmer, to horrible, Kristen Bell, and everything in between. This is clearly Val's show and he takes it and goes strong. All of the other characters are really not in it long enough to make a impression except for Bell's annoying, bratty, whore, role of the daughter. I would like to blame Mamet but I don't think I can. Speaking of Mamet, its amazing how writing can go from Brilliance to crap in a matter of 1 ½ hours, but this is the case. Maybe the production was running out of money and he had to change it, I don't know but something happened.

Despite all of this, I really like this movie. I like it so much that it makes me angry what happened in the last 30 minutes. Watch the movie, its good, it just could have been a WHOLE lot better.

Brian - the Naked Gun