Costa-Gavras’s direction is more competent than inspired; the film functions as a thriller, but only barely. What the movie has going for it, really, is a germ of an idea—but one that is potent enough to give this story a sharp and unsettling charge. That the movie deals with rabid American racism without hedging on either its ugliness or its intensity is itself an accomplishment of some note.
Jonathan Rosenbaum
September 02, 1988