This movie reminded me of “The Negotiator”. Only with great character actors taking the parts played by Sam L. and Spacey. I am a big fan of both Don Cheadle and Guy Pierce and thought they did good work here. Pierce did an okay blown out Southern accent. I thought Cheadle was great showing nuance of emotion throughout. Saïd Taghmaoui I guess is the go to guy to play Arabic characters. It’s a wonder he wasn’t cast in The Kingdom [Blu-ray | DVD]. But he does a good job always. He should get some roles outside of this kind of movie though.
There wasn’t too much surprising about this movie. No big twists and turns, save kind of one. I didn’t really expect Cheadle’s character to engage in terrorism, so I didn’t expect his end bombs were real. But they were.
I don’t think the cat and mouse between Cheadle and Pierce was as grabbing as Sam L. and Spacey, but it was still very good.