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Why so much hype?

Sorry, this movie sucks

Simple and well acted, it has tension enough to knot the stomach.

There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

As others have noted its a fairly old, and at the time bold little conspiracy idea. Don't watch it with a jaded eye. I saw it when it came out. It's not masterful but its clever and solid. If you are a wanna be mili film critic then it may be lost on you

A turgid script filled with comic book villains, cheerful misogyny, and sappy dialog plus absolutely leaden performances by Kristofferson and Treat Williams (seriously, dude, your name is Treat?), and an incomprehensible plot, result in one of the least interesting action movies of the 80s. I believe this is a made-for-HBO movie before they figured out how to do series like the Sopranos. It looks like a typical no-budget made-for-TV movie with the addition of a couple of raunchy scenes and a few dozen swear words. The only thing more baffling than the end is why I watched it to the end. But as an act of generosity, I am awarding this turkey three whole stars - for the 3 minutes of screen time occupied by one of the film's stars, Rip Torn, who delivers a patented Rip Torn performance that at least lets you know you are watching an actual actor.

"Every morning when I get up, I thank God for drugs and murder and subversion." That is the best line in the entire movie and I thank Steve Skafte of Nova Scotia for including it in his review. Kurtwood Smith is, for me the highlight of this otherwise, "OK" movie.But first, a couple of the review titles are kind of give-a-ways to the story's end. I'm glad I didn't look at this page or the review until AFTER seeing the movie.With that said, I wasn't overly impressed. I've never thought Kris Kristofferson was a great actor, nor a great singer, but he's a better actor than a singer. Not a popular opinion on either count, but that's where I stand. He's "OK" in this movie, so is Treat Williams. Slightly better than "OK", he's actually GOOD. I'll end it there as for the acting. No wait, Kevin Conway was a little too stereotypical of the tough boss. Terrific actor, but come on, had he toned it down just a bit, it would have been a very nice job, not just...."OK".One of my biggest gripes however is how all these Border Patrol Agents can be listening to the radio and yet still miss that two of their own are dead. Sorry, but if the Sheriff and the creepy secret police guys got wind, it HAD to go over the radio at some point. Pre-Cell Phone era, right? Real life would have seen every agent in the area swarm down on the barn, even if told not to. And yet, no matter what, people seem to hear selectively and no one is phased by all the insanity going on around them. No one seems to notice ANYTHING unusual except our heroes.I know, I know, it's just a movie, calm down. But a movie is supposed to pull you in, make you want to believe what you're seeing is real, even if only for the length of the movie. This didn't for me. It was just a bit borderline DUMB, slight pun intended.And lastly, though I have no association with the Border Patrol, I felt insulted on their behalf by a few lines here and there that essentially made the Border Patrol seem like a meaningless, nothing agency full of malcontents and people with no where else to go. That is a fine agency that deserves a bit more respect than the movie gave it, no a LOT more respect."The Border" with Jack Nicholson really only made a few of the Agents look bad, and since bad people can end up on ANY job, that was fine (even though Nicholson's character was essentially a good guy doing a bad thing)but "Flashpoint" insulted the agency a bit. At least I felt it did.But that's not why I find the movie only "OK". I just wasn't impressed on the whole and yet, I watched it from start to finish and walked away satisfied....that it was on HBO and I didn't pay any extra money to watch it. That's the best way to see an a movie that just, "OK"!

I would like to contradict another citizen of the movie world about this movie. The plot is not childish, though it has a couple of holes in it (like events around the supporting male star), but it demands the viewer attention to details - a characteristic of a good cop. But the picture is about that, good cops - and showing, as in a western of the mid 70s, that all cowboys and cops are rotten, only in different ways. This grim view of society (a society built in the capitalist, Washingtonian way) is very boring, and stupid for many that prefer to view life as kinky, and prefer to assume the dollar bills are more clean then those 800,000 we see in a bag in the desert... If you have not seen plainclothes men (from Washington, Moscow, or Lisboa) acting like elephants in a China store, you would assume those actors were really bad. Learn more, please. The ending will be surprising and emotional for viewers attentive enough to discern the real plot behind the plot. It is all about the industrial-military complex taking over the lives of everybody in the USA, and reaching as far out as across the Atlantic, and even the Mediterranean, as the Kosovo War reminded us. A B-movie, yes! A bad movie, decidedly, passionately not. There are plenty of FLASHPOINT titles around, as if to confuse viewers on purpose. Would that be part of the conspiracy this movie is all about? :-)