• Directed by John Glen
• Written by Ripley Highsmith, based on the novel The Heat of Ramadan by Steven Hartov
• Starring
  • Christopher Lambert
  • Kerry Fox
  • Vincent Regan
  • Cal Macaninch
  • Maryan D’Abo
• Produced by Silvio Muraglia

You’ve probably heard of the Mossad, the Israeli intelligence agency. The Mossad was originally formed to hunt down escaped Nazi war criminals. You may suspect that such a task would be met with a certain heartfelt enthusiasm by the agents, and you would be right. And that level of ambition has kept with the agency ever since. In short, the Mossad is a bunch of extremely efficient bad-asses. The Mossad could eat our CIA for breakfast without bothering to chew.

If I were in the Mossad, I would be severely pissed off with this movie, because it essentially portrays Israeli intelligence as a bunch of well-meaning bumblers.

And now, from our “What NOT to Play Chicken With” instructional video…

Christopher Lambert is Tony, a member of a covert Israeli team composed entirely of non-Israeli agents (which is why Christopher Lambert’s mere presence doesn’t elicit peals of laughter). Their current mission is to eliminate PLO terrorist Amar Kamil (Vincent Regan), traveling in Luxembourg. (Lambert makes his home in Luxembourg these days, and apparently production companies are willing to meet him there to make the movies he’s starred in recently. In fact, although there are only a couple of countryside shots in The Point Men, I think I recognized a hillside that also appears in Fortress 2.) They manage to track and plug their quarry, but some mysterious circumstances (like thugs who start shooting at the agents only after they’ve offed Kamil), plus Kamil’s totally non-stoic reaction to looking down the wrong end of a gun barrel, lead Tony to believe that the man they killed wasn’t the real Kamil. (Tony also managed to get himself shot but good in the fracas, which may contribute to his reasoning.)

Unfortunately, the rather messy hit (complete with a train wreck) becomes an international embarrassment, so the Mossad puts the entire team out to pasture — either take a desk job, or find a new line of work. Tony opts for the former, which keeps him in Tel Aviv at headquarters but unable to follow up on his suspicions.

But, as you can probably guess, the real Kamil is alive, and he’s used his connections with the Russian Mafia to arrange plastic surgery to remove that fake latex nose. Then, being the complete master of disguise, he starts his travels to meet the former team members one by one, befriend them, and then kill them.

Leave it to a PLO terrorist to pick his nose the hard way.

All of which sounds like a good premise for a spy suspense film. Too bad it doesn’t work.

First up, we never get to know the team before the crap starts to fly. It’s just a bunch of people chasing each other and shooting. There’s an attempt to humanize Tony right at the beginning, as he makes a tape recording for his unborn child, being carried by fellow agent Maddy (Kerry Fox), but instead this just becomes a lump of exposition — and since the idea of making recordings for the kid never comes up again, it’s pretty obvious that it was an expositional ploy rather than a real part of the story or means of characterization.

Second, suspense really doesn’t build, partially because Kamil’s killings don’t follow any pattern that will give us a clue to motive. In each case he spends an inordinate amount of time befriending each one, then kills them without any sort of deathtrap explanation. I’ve never killed someone I’ve hated, but I can tell you the two main ways to do it: either simply plug them on sight, or get them into a defenseless position so I can gloat and tell them exactly why I’m killing them. Kamil does neither; in one case, he makes friends with an agent who’s moved back to New York City, invites him over, stops at the corner grocery with him for some milk, and then shoots him out of the blue. In another case, he seduces Maryam D’Abo, who’s working at the embassy in Monaco; he spends a lot of time being charming, makes her dinner while she takes a shower, dances with her and has sex with her, and then strangles her without any sign that he’s let her know why he’s killing her. They don’t ever eat the dinner he went to all the trouble to make.

Wait — which side are you supposed to drive on in Luxembourg?

Third, Tony’s a pretty ineffectual hero. He shows up late and is always one step behind. His actions have absolutely no effect on Kamir’s plans until the very end; he’s not even a thorn in Kamir’s side.

Fourth, we keep hopping from location to location. Director John Glen gave us five James Bond films in the ’80s, and somehow the settings here seem like an odd, unfunny parody of Bond. We got from Luxembourg to Zurich to Tel Aviv to New York to Monaco to Tel Aviv to Luxembourg to Austria to Monaco to Tel Aviv to… Each time we change location, we get an establishing shot, complete with a title telling us where we are. Each time. Folks, I may not be the sharpest knife in the drawer, but if you show me an establishing shot of Tel Aviv and tell me that it’s “Tel Aviv,” I’ll probably be able to remembe that it’s Tel Aviv next time you show it to me, without having to nudge me and tell me, “This is Tel Aviv again, remember?” I’ve seen subtitled foreign films with less on-screen text.

Fifth, there’s supposed to be a love vs. duty subplot in the relationship between Tony and Maddy. I think. Honestly, Lambert and Fox have so little onscreen chemistry that my VCR forgot it was on during their scenes.

Bizarrely, Kamir takes the disguise of an Evil Accounting Professor.

Sixth, Kamir’s motivation stays sucky. It finally gets explained to us by a convenient Palestinian Exposition Agent, but it has no immediacy — especially when said Expo Agent also gives us a second motivation, and then a motivation which might be acting in conflict with that second motivation. You may be having trouble putting that all together when I’m speaking in such vague terms, but trust me, it’s not worth all the explaining I’d have to do to give you the details; it’d still be vague and uncompelling.

Seventh, the agents come off as nebbishes. One of them, a seasoned field agent, says he hasn’t even held a handgun since basic training. Another, when confronted with the old “slam my car into yours” attack, apparently can’t figure out how to turn his wheel and slam his car back; he just takes it, looking panicked. (This from an agent whom Tony later says is the best driver he ever knew.) Nobody behaves like they’ve been field operatives on covert operations for years and years; most high school janitors have a better conception of security and tactics than these people do.

Eighth, the pacing had me completely screwed up. After what seemed like a feature-length collection of backtracking, attacks, discoveries, suspicions, etc, I looked at the clock on the VCR and was aghast to notice that only an hour had passed. You don’t need to be a screenwriter to instinctively understand story structure; most regular moviegoers can feel when and where the story needs to crescendo, where the plot needs to twist, where the intensity and pace need to pick up and drive headlong to the conclusion. Instead, things here puttered along blandly enough that the movie had worn out its welcome in an hour’s time.

(Giggle.)

Ninth, I’ve rarely seen a climactic showdown that was less climactic. We’ve had enough explosions, car chases, stabbings, etc., that this technically qualifies as an action flick — but the final confrontation between hero and villain should be more than a single bullet long. Honestly, I was still waiting for them to have the real ending when the credits rolled.

There’s more — red herrings that are never resolved, themes of family and commitment that are plopped out and never built upon, the late addition of a sidekick for Tony — but really, I don’t think I need to bag on it any further. Suffice it to say that the movie makes a lot of promises that it doesn’t keep — and instead of fulfilling those promises, it just keeps making more of them, like an Enron exec in the last few weeks before the fit hit the shan.

Some Notable Totables:

• body count: 20
• breasts: 4
• pasty male butts: 1
• explosions: 3
• ominous thunderstorms: 0
• actors who’ve appeared on Star Trek: 0