Slow pace in the most part of the movie.

I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

It's not great by any means, but it's a pretty good movie that didn't leave me filled with regret for investing time in it.

Just intense enough to provide a much-needed diversion, just lightweight enough to make you forget about it soon after it’s over. It’s not exactly “good,” per se, but it does what it sets out to do in terms of putting us on edge, which makes it … successful?

When you look through a binocular you see one image... not two! And this film got it right!Hollywood can't even get this simple fact right and it annoys me immensely. The annoying thing is that directors can get access to so much money and are not intelligent enough to get it right. If they spend a hundred dollars more they could buy a consultant to tell them things like that! But the directors are too dumb! Amazing.So a big HOORAY for The Fourth War!! The ONLY other film I remember that avoids this Hollywood dumb cliché is The Bridge On The River Kwai.And that's not all folks. The Fourth War lets the Russians speak Russian. I'm close to tears with enthusiasm! In the Hollywood world where Germans, Russians, Chinese and every alien from outer space speaks American this is groundbreaking. I know that most Americans are too dumb to read subtitles (or rather Hollywood think they are) but it renders authenticity in wast amounts to a movie.The ridiculous script is totally forgiven on these two grounds!!

I was suckered into paying to see this movie in the theater because of the title and because I like the actors.For 19 years now, this movie has been my standard by which to judge all terrible films.There was no excuse for the distribution of this film.Plodding, meandering, insulting to the intelligence of the viewer, and not a sufficient allegory for the cold war to have made it worth seeing.The only reason to watch this movie is to see how truly awful a movie can be.

A furiously intense story that takes place shortly after the Cold War where an American colonel (Roy Scheider - "Jaws") who has a troubled past, picks a fight with a high-ranking Soviet military officer, (Jurgen Prochnow - "Das Boot") that nearly escelates into a Tarantino-like standoff. Scheider and Prochnow are both good and so is Harry Dean Stanton ("The Straight Story"), who plays Scheider's superior officer and an old war buddy who is concerned about his friend. Director John Frankenheimer ("Ronin") is smart in making the film go smoothly and I got kick out of the scene where Prochnow and two other Russian officers briefly watch an American (college) football game on t.v., question it, and laugh at it.

I frankly expected more from a Frakenheimer movie. Roy Scheider as Colonel Jack Knowles is okay as the hothead military iconoclast who's not been the same since the war in Vietnam. He is sent to the German-Czech border and wages a personal vendetta against the short-fused Russian colonel Valachev, played quite menacingly by Jurgen Prochnow. The end of detente and the last Cold War battle? Well, Scheider throws a snowball at Prochnow and the fourth war starts. basically that's how. The premise is good but we are treated to a long and meandering tit-for-tat between two Army colonels that borders on the childish and wanton. While occasionally funny, this is not an intelligent movie. You'd be better off watching Toy Soldiers if you want a more gripping story.