Touches You

Simply Perfect

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

Walter Lloyd (Gene Hackman) runs a Dallas lumber company. His son Chris (Matt Dillon) repairs stock cars and doesn't get along with him. His wife Donna travels to Paris but she goes missing. Father and son go off to look for her. Soon the stodgy businessman Walter turns into a man of action without Chris' knowledge. Walter is approached by two gun men with Donna's jewelry but he turns the table on them. He used to work for the CIA and reconnects with an old college Barney Taber (Josef Sommer). Chris saves his father from another gun attack and he finally comes clean to his son.Matt Dillon is overplaying the bratty know-it-all rebellious teenager role. He overplays everything by a little like when he is first told. Hackman is more of the lead and he's very solid. It's a worthwhile watch for Hackman fans. It goes to lesser seen location like Germany. It's a competent spy action thriller but Matt Dillon's character keeps annoying me with his arrogant ignorance. He's being shot at, his father is a secret spy, his mother is kidnapped and he's still chasing tail.

Ex-CIA agent, now operating a hardware business in Dallas, Texas, Walter Lloyd(Gene Hackman) finds that his wife Donna(Gayle Hunnicutt)has been kidnapped during her trip in Paris and must find her. Estranged son Chris(Matt Dillon)insists on joining him as they help keep each other stay alive in the midst of gunmen, working for mysterious sources,trying to kill them. His former partner Taber(Josef Sommer), now the head CIA man in Paris seems only too willing to help an old pal out. Clay(Guy Boyd)is Taber's right hand man trying to find out who would wish to kidnap Donna. The film follows Walter and Chris on their Euro journey often escaping certain peril in some rousing action sequences and near-death escapes. The one responsible for kidnapping Donna might be seeking revenge towards Walter for a CIA operation titled "Operation:Clean Sweep" which led to a family being slaughtered of one Cold War target that got away.Popcorn espionage thriller following Hackman and Dillon I thought was entertaining even if I didn't believe what the plot was selling for a minute. Syrupy bonding sequences between Hackman and Dillon just don't seem to work. Hackman, always the versatile actor, plays the role of hero with ease. The climax when it's revealed who was really behind the slaughter of a family..the one Hackman's Walter is being held accountable for..doesn't hold up well. I do not think the one responsible for such an act, carried out the way it was, would make himself look so guilty at such an inopportune time. Crackerjack bomb-diffusing sequence at the end is quite suspenseful, though.

How a talent like Gene Hackman ever got involved with this tripe I do not know. 1985 - not exactly a golden year for movies - maybe he just needed a job.The action is driven by an initial kidnapping and the plot turns on a series of twists that don't just stretch the bounds of possibility they snap it! How come everyone seems to know when Hackman will be arriving in a new city and are duly waiting for him, for example? And not once but repeatedly.Indeed, the basic premise of the movie insults the intelligence.Hackman's character argues that the person kidnapped will be kept alive until the kidnappers have their hands on him. Why does he think that? WHY??? It doesn't make ANY sense!! Especially, in the given circumstances.Add to this, the corny dialogue, Matt Dillon playing the dumbo (again!), and an actor who turns out to be the corrupt official/bad guy in every film I've ever seen him in (so no surprise twist there!) and you get a film that should have been thrown out at the development stage.

My boyfriend is a big Gene Hackman fan so he wanted to rent this movie every time he passed it in the store. This movie is utterly forgettable, slow-moving, boring, and extremely clichéd. It would not have made it to video without Gene Hackman in the lead role. I like Matt Dillon, but he does not act well in this movie. My boyfriend kept imitating Matt's facial expressions (surprise, confusion, happy) which turned it into a comedy for me.Even the ending of the movie is silly with an exploding building. You wish everybody would blow up too. I think they play ring around the rosy or something at the end.