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So much average

Memorable, crazy movie

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;

i liked this film, it was about something id never heard of before,which is always good,and to have a large part of it based in Britain was nice, my reason for giving it 8 and not 10, is SPOILER ALERT: plot holes, such as in Britain if you arrive at a hospital with gun shot wounds carrying a gun and crash into cars, the police are called, and would hang around until you woke up,as its a rare event,and they would have confiscated his gun. SPOILER ALERT. also if there is a giant explosion any where, either the police or military police would attend, pretty quickly, or fire fighters,or just local people.as Britain really isn't big enough to have middle of no where places. but besides that, i liked it,

I must admit I was pleasantly surprised by The Numbers Station. Going on John Cusack's recent venture into silly, inconsequential direct to video thrillers without depth or heft, I expected a mind numbing cash grab with his moniker shamelessly plastered in pre title billing. I only watched it for a couple of actors I really enjoy, and what I got was thoroughly fun, slow burning spy thriller that took its time, built the characters and focused on mood and story instead of just action filler. During and after the Cold War, Numerous 'Numbers Stations' were planted all over Europe, facilities where operatives would reside, broadcasting codes in the form of random sequences of digits, all over the region to various agents, who would read them, and carry out the orders embedded within. Cusack's plays a disgraced agent who is assigned to accompany a coder (Malin Ackerman) to a remote station, and protect her and the premises. They arrive and are immediately at odds with each other. Ackerman is a rookie spook with idealistic values and a sunshiny demeanour that irks Cusack right off the bat. He has acres of tragedy behind him, curdling his personality into a jaded, hangdog presence, essentially just wearily carrying out the motions with listless resignation. The script wisely gives them time to bicker about their differences, learn a bit about each other and form a shaky bond before the inevitable conflict rears its head, in the form of a rogue special ops unit led by a determined psychopath (Richard Brake). Their aim is to hijack the numbers stations broadcasting capabilities and send out codes of their own containing orders to do God knows what. It's up to Cusack to prevent this, giving him new purpose. The underrated Liam Cunningham briefly shows up as Cusack's morally bankrupt partner who ends up having a crisis of conscience, and portrays it really well as only Cunnningham can do. It's not a movie to rave about, but it's a solid, moody thriller for lovers of the genre, perfect for a lazy rainy night.

Everybody has seen films about 'black ops' stuff. This film is completely different. In this film you see 'black ops' guys acting like barbarians towards other human beings who did nothing to deserve it. The fact that 'they might compromise something' is hardly a qualifier for shooting down an unarmed teenage girl-which is what the film depicts. The term 'disgraced black ops person' as that applies to John Cusack's character has about as much meaning as a poem from Pol Pot. I have never seen the world of clandestine operations depicted in quite this way before. It of course makes me wonder if it is true. The acting is as usual great from all involved. I think movies are not about the actors anymore-they are about the ideas presented in the movies. This isn't a very glossy film but it is thought provoking-if making people think was the filmmakers objective I think they achieved their objective.

Danish director Kasper Barfoed doesn't do much to make "The Numbers Game" memorable in his English-language film debut. This formulaic secret agent thriller stars a world-weary John Cusack as a CIA field agent who finds himself relegated to the position of a watch-dog for Malin Akerman after he fails to pull the trigger on an innocent bystander during a botched hit. Aside from its happy ending, little remains to distinguish this murky as well as murderous espionage epic. The characters emerge as one-dimensional ciphers that make only a minimal impression. The opening scenes in New Jersey have our morally conflicted hero gunning down three men in a bar and then pursuing a fourth to his residence where he polishes him off only to be confronted by the dead man's daughter. CIA operative Emerson Kent (John Cusack) doesn't see any reason to raise the body count, but his brusque superior, Grey (Liam Cunningham of "Titanic"), shares no such sentiments and insists that the girl must go. Ah, well, we all knew that "Grosse Point Blank's" John Cusack had drawn a moral line in the sand that he cannot cross. Grey demotes him to watching a code operator, Katherine (Malin Anderson of "Catch .44") at a remote number's station in Suffolk, England. You can tell that this is a low-budget thriller because no more than a handful of people populate any scene and the two primary locales are far off the beaten path. Otter Guðnason's widescreen cinematography, Ged Clarke's production design, and Liz Griffiths' set direction make solid contributions, Barfoed doesn't generate any momentum. The best thing you can say about this analog melodrama is that it doesn't wear out its welcome as he wraps up everything in under 90 minutes. Freshman scenarist F. Scott Frazier gives none of the principals any quotable dialogue, and the complicated plot about untraceable radio broadcasts in the field and an attack on the isolated installation won't have you mesmerizing your friends with its double-crosses and revelations. Since the Richard Burton spy thriller "The Spy Who Came in from the Cold" (1965), we have known that the espionage business provides more grief than rewards. You'll have to be a schmuck like me, who keeps buying Cusack's direct-to-video thrillers like "The Factory" and "The Number's Station," to waste your time on this fodder. The conceit that intelligence agencies rely on analog transmissions of encoded information from outlying areas to their field operatives doesn't make this indie thriller, with eighteen executive producers, irresistible. John Cusack replaced Ethan Hawke, and he gives a serviceable performance, but this humorless, humdrum thriller looks like a paycheck potboiler. Neither Cusack nor Akerman take any time out to either grope or fondle each other. Little in the way of fireworks occurs. Liam Cunningham makes a strong villain but Barfoed denies us the closure of a showdown between Cunningham and Cusack. The siege section of "The Number's Game" yields little in the way of either suspense or excitement, but the supporting cast never reflects these shortcomings. There is a small amount of violence, but nothing that will make you flinch.