The Package ★★★

AMERICAN action thriller The Package is an entertaining watch but suffers in comparison to other films it references.

Released in 1989 it stars Tommy Lee Jones and the late Gene Hackman in the leading roles.

Whenever you put Hackman behind the wheel of a car involved in a high-speed chase through city streets you are going to invoke Popeye Doyle’s manic car-train pursuit in The French Connection.

It’s an almost impossible task to measure up to that stunning example of 1970s’ guerilla film-making.

And, while The Package has a good set-up and decent twist, the final act also pales in comparison to another political assassination thriller, 1974’s The Day of the Jackal.

as a mysterious it is a 1989 American political action thriller film, directed by Andrew Davis and starring: Gene Hackman, Joanna Cassidy, Tommy Lee Jones, John Heard and Dennis Franz.

Director Andrew Davis’s film starts in West Berlin where Russian and American government and armed forces leaders are meeting to start the process for the future signing of a nuclear disarmament treaty.

In a similar vein to the Kennedy assassination thriller Executive Action (1973), a star chamber of powerful figures is determined to stop this challenge to the status quo at all costs, including murder.

A key member of this shadowy group, who is starting to waver in his support, is murdered after he leaves the meeting.

The head of the meeting’s protective team, veteran U.S. Army Green Beret Sergeant John Gallagher (Hackman), is made a scapegoat for the ‘security failure’.

Gallagher is given the lowly job of escorting a loud-mouthed, disruptive Army officer, Sergeant Walter Henke (Lee Jones) back to the US for a hearing into his assault of other officers.

On arrival Henke takes advantage of a fight to give Gallagher the slip. In his pursuit of the escapee, Gallagher comes to the realisation that Heneke is part of a much larger, deadly conspiracy.

Entertaining but a little too derivative.

Watched on Prime