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Thanks for the memories!

A film with more than the usual spoiler issues. Talking about it in any detail feels akin to handing you a gift-wrapped present and saying, "I hope you like it -- It's a thriller about a diabolical secret experiment."

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

It's an enjoyably tense television movie. Written by Frderick Forsythe, it has little action in it but a good deal of suspense. Forsythe has the peculiar characteristic of being able to invest small details with interest, especially technical details and complicated identity scams. This, being a TV movie, is going to lack much in the way of that talent and concentrates instead on simple intrigues and mysteries, some of which are left unexplained. People come and go, lying to and cheating one another, but it's not high drama and it's not witty.The MacGuffin here is some formula for a super antibiotic, as if we didn't have enough antibiotics. It winds up by accident in Rod Taylor's hands and the head honcho of the biggest, most villainous corporation you ever heard of wants it back. That accident, by the way, involves a light airplane crashing directly into Taylor's cottage on the Kerry coast and killing his wife and two children. It's made clear at the opening that Taylor is an ex Green Beret but that plays little part in the narrative until the ridiculous ending.It may be one of Taylor's best performances, TV movie or not. He's aged, like a good wine. No longer the confident, tanned young hero of "The Birds", he's now a little puffy and from some angles looks uncannily like Robin Williams. By the time of "Welcome to Woop Woop," he was a goggle-eyed caricature of his former handsome self but it didn't bother him and it was a viewer's delight.Joanna Petit has held up well. In fact -- pretty well indeed. Her role, though, is a stereotype, the ambitious female reporter. Didn't Dirty Harry get saddled with one of them somewhere along the line of sequels? The script is functional but lacks poetry. The location shooting in Ireland is just fine and County Kerry is just as I remember it -- rainy, with "sun breaks." At the climax, the film implodes. Characters change their personalities for reasons of the utmost stupidity. Here's the grim villain who does the wet work, combing the grassy wind-swept hills, looking to kill Taylor who is hiding somewhere among the brush. This dedicated assassin has always been a cool customer, dressed in black, silent, full of self control. But now he must cold cock one of his partners in a fit of pique, which is stupid. Then, unable to determine Taylor's hiding place in the grassy hills and the furze bushes, he whirls around wildly, firing his pistol in all directions until he's out of ammunition. He runs until he's exhausted. Taylor corners him and the villain drops to his knees, sobbing and begging for mercy. Right.There is one gem of a performance in the movie. Cyril Cusack's police detective. The role, like that of the reporter, the head honcho and his goons, is a cliché. Cusack shows up once in a while to politely inform Taylor to keep his nose out of police business, forget about revenge, and let the cops do their jobs. But Cusack turns his appearances into something that brightens the whole show. He was equally good in another Forsythe story, "The Day of the Jackal." Not the revolting remake, but the original.

So I'm watching the sabotaged plane go down in the Irish countryside, making a direct hit on a farmhouse where the Donegin family is on holiday, and I have to think to myself - how incredible are the odds of something like that happening? For starters, the plane was supposed to blow up in mid-air if I'm not mistaken, and secondly, on any other given day, the Donegin's wouldn't have been in the house to get wiped out like that. Talk about bad luck, but Steve Donegin's (Rod Taylor) was a gazillion to one shot.I have to second another reviewer for this film, the dialog in it was pretty bad, and in my case it was for over half the picture. Going in I had to rely on a brief synopsis on the DVD sleeve, and coming out I had to read the other reviews here. The main point of the picture being a revenge flick I pretty much figured out on my own, but then there was some other business about a revolutionary new antibiotic and an international enterprise corporation called Intent, which stood for International Enterprise. You can see I'm trying to come up with stuff for this review.So if Rod Taylor's character was a former Green Beret and Viet Nam vet we have to believe the math works for his character who looked every bit of fifty years old that Taylor was at the time. Not buying it. As the investigative reporter looking into the circumstances of the plane crash and industrial sabotage, actress Joanne Pettet's character is written like she might be falling for Donegin. Not buying that one either. The only thing I did buy was this film as part of a two hundred fifty Mystery Movie pack from Mill Creek Entertainment at a cheap enough price that makes the occasional clunker bearable.

Taylor stars as an insurance executive (and ex-Green Beret) whose family is killed when a private jet crashes into their holiday house. Initially thought to have been a tragic accident, the wily local inspector (Cusack) discovers that a bomb brought the plane down, a revelation that has Taylor seeing red and bent on finding those responsible to take revenge. Pettet co-stars as an intrepid reporter whose expose on shady corporation "Intent" suggest industrial espionage may have caused the death of Taylor's family. Its wealthy CEO (Davenport) appears to be unconnected, but a quick sojourn to Corsica reveals more intrigue and implication. While Taylor might do a realistic portrayal of an unhinged widow, he's less believable in Green Beret fatigues and face paint. Davenport appears late in the film and makes little impact, Alexander Knox has a pointless cameo as Taylor's war veteran father now living on Corsica, and Pettet is pretty but frivolous. Cusack has the best dialogue and is able to stand apart from the dreck. Some picturesque Irish countryside together with the capable cast is all that saves this would-be thriller from going down in flames with the plane. Desperately in need of more action and suspense, and less clichéd conspiracy speculation.

While it is set up with an interesting premise, a man losing his family as collateral damage caused by some spy stuff, this starts strongly and then just fizzles. The character played by Rod Taylor is so dull. He seems to recover from an incredible tragedy very quickly, then finds himself embroiled in espionage and a need to avenge the event. There are a series of connections that he must make and finally face the person at the top. This could have been OK but its so tiringly dull. There are encounters, handled so incompetently by the bad guys, that he is allowed to roam free. Anyone who is involved in the upper levels of this type of crime would have taken one of many opportunities to just finish him off. Obviously, there is the ubiquitous briefcase, but we don't even know what that's all about. It's so obvious when a film is made for TV with so little effort to fill in the spaces. Taylor is apparently a Green Beret, but there is so little character development that we don't get in his head at all. Could have been good. Isn't.