James Caan and Robert Duvall play these two special agents working for some sort of intelligence agency. Something akin to the CIA but not officially the CIA.
The job seems to be going along smoothly until Robert Duvall's character decides to switch sides and kill one of their contracted Persons of Interest.Then he shoots James Caan once in the shoulder and once in the knee. Deciding not to kill them, but to leave them incapacitated and in a early ''retirement''.
The next large chunk of the film is just James Caan recuperating as he goes through physical therapy and basic exercise to regain his motor skills. He's told by his bosses that he can't be a special agent anymore and that he can be given some sort of cushy desk job instead.
But James Caan doesn't want to do that. Deciding to stick to his physical therapy in the hopes that he might be able to get revenge on Robert Duvall's character for shooting him in the first place.
Or at least it's kind of implied that's what he wants to do.
Eventually we get to the point where he has a showdown with Robert Duvall and he doesn't even want to shoot him anymore.
The story keeps breaking down of all these conversations about people working with other people setups to how they're going to get around whatever danger happens to be present and then deciding if what they're doing is even worth the effort.
And honestly I was kind of cool with this to begin with.
I like stories with the main plot often breaks down and the characters just head off in different directions, doing something else realising that their original goal was fruitless or problematic to them in the first place.
But if you're going to do something like that then what you replace it with should be something equally if not more interesting than the initial story.
Throwing a weird love interests, have some sort of in words character development.
You know something with a bit more kick to it; A little Humanity if you will.
Don't just throw in a bunch of ninjas that feel incredibly out of place.
All right so I'm getting off in a bit of a tangent but there's ninjas in this movie and they do not belong here.
It be one thing if they were just silent Assassins but their literal stereotypical ninjas with ninja Garb and swords ready to attack at any point.
It just feels really tacky.
Like somebody was making a criminal Thriller film and they decided; ''Hey kung fu movies are really popular. Let's throw that in to our film to appeal to a larger demographic.''
This movie was already suffering with disconnected story lines and kind of indifferent characters. Throwing in goofy gimmicks like a silly cop or sword-wielding Kung Fu action scenes just seems so out of place.
Especially when you have your two main lead being Robert Duvall and James Caan. There's so much potential there for witty banter or tough but intriguing dialogue. The first 5 minutes of the film is great it's just the two of them driving in the car mocking one another.
I really wish we had more of the film dedicated to that. Imagine if it was half the movie. All that character development and interpersonal relationships being ripped apart by one of them turns and completely ruining the other one's life.
There's a lot of drama and intrigue to be had there.
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