Who payed the critics

Excellent, a Must See

Blistering performances.

The tone of this movie is interesting -- the stakes are both dramatic and high, but it's balanced with a lot of fun, tongue and cheek dialogue.

Oh dear. This had the potential to be so much better. Spanish made so did not need to be big and blousy (cue SEXY BEAST) and why does it have to appeal to the US market anyway. There is another world out there folks. Can't they also appreciate smaller European films. Potential beautiful locations wasted, including Madrid. Dialogue]script was just plain terrible - predictable and banal. Penelope Ann Miller and Henry Thomas didn't even put much effort into it. PAM whines all the way through, looking for her "daughter" with seemingly less frantic interest in her beloved "husband" and HT looks like he just got out of high school and is completely out of his element. The kid daughter just had to yell the lines, "Daddy, Daddy!" The subtitles, which I needed as an aid to understanding the mumbled English, were wrong as once again, no-one seems to be able to spell COLOMBIAN correctly !! Music reasonably OK, suspense lacking, characters all too incredibly 'pretty', the baddies look stereotypical and the opening sequence of the drugs raid seemed quite chopped like it had gone into a blender, so initially I had no idea WHO was WHO nor what was going on. I nearly turned off right then! The mafia family, Arias and daughter were more relaxed and believable. And what the heck was Dean Stockwell doing with a wavering attempt at a British accent in the US Embassy in...er, Barcelona. That should have flagged up one of the flaws as it would only be a CONSULATE. This is just a mess. You won't miss much missing it. Unless you need a sleeping pill.

This was so bad it was embarrassing. Oh dear, whatever happened to the cute kid from E.T. ? Henry Thomas's acting was just hideous. He was so nervous and uncomfortable, I just couldn't handle watching any more. I think I even caught a nervous twitch in the corner of his mouth. This is more the pity as I always thought he was destined to go somewhere, after his 'crying' moment in E.T. which was a wonderful piece of acting.Penelope's acting at times was lovely, but unfortunately it wasn't enough to save this lemon of a movie. No redeeming features at all, just a total waste of time.

The movie attempts to make a suspenseful crime thriller and fails miserably. i would rather sit and listen to nails screeching against a chalkboard for an hour and a half than watch this junk again. The writer fails completely to illustrate the syntax and diction of the present while simultaneously failing to capture a sense of reality in the film. My roommate in high school could write a better film than this. At the end of the day DO NOT WATCH THIS MOVIE, you wont gather any helpful introspective knowledge about yourself or others, it wont advance your intellectual curiosity, it wont serve as any form of education on any subjects and most importantly it wont satisfy you with the entertaining pleasure that even some mediocre movies achieve. This is unmitigated GARBAGE. Damn I hate this film.