It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.

Close shines in drama with strong language, adult themes.

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

Great example of an old-fashioned, pure-at-heart escapist event movie that doesn't pretend to be anything that it's not and has boat loads of fun being its own ludicrous self.

Roger Donaldson always distinct itself by making mediocre films. Just think of movies like "Cocktail", "Species", "Dante's Peak" and the remakes of "No Way Out" and "The Getaway". Now most of this movies showed some great potential but yet somehow Donaldson manages to not let this movie pass the mark of average. I really liked his movie "Thirteen Days" though, which was just great but this mostly was due to its compelling historic tense story. Even that movie shows great flaws in the directing. Even though he doesn't make that great movies he still makes well known wells, which also really is an accomplishment, I must admit.I'm afraid that this movie is also a typical example of a Roger Donaldson movie. The concept of the movie sounds just great and shows more than enough potential to create a tense and original thriller with, with perhaps even noir elements in it. And also just look at the cast, how could you go wrong with this? The movie is still a decent one but it leaves lots of potential unused. The movie is not really ever tense or mysterious, mostly because of the reason that the story always stays way too vague and overcomplicated with twists that don't always seem to make credible sense. In the end you just simply stop caring about the story and its characters.It's an amazing cast if you look at it. It features stars such as Willem Dafoe, Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio, Mickey Rourke, M. Emmet Walsh, Miguel Sandoval, James Rebhorn and also actors who weren't big stars yet at the time such as Samuel L. Jackson and Maura Tierney. The actors all do their very best but at times they're obviously struggling with the confusing script and formulaic dialog. See it or don't. It's not a bad movie but it ain't a recommendable one either.6/10http://bobafett1138.blogspot.com/

A man has apparently committed suicide in he New Mexico desert and beside his body is a bag containing $500,000 so local sheriff Ray Dolezal decides to keep the dead man's rendezvous to unravel the mystery A lot of people have complained about WHITE SANDS being implausiable , contrived or over plotted . My complaint is that it's really none of these things but suffers from a fundamental flaw we're warned about at basic screen writing course " Show , don't tell " . For much of the screen time the plot twists and turns well enough but ion the last 15 minutes we have to listen to characters state " I'm not how you think I am , I'm really .... " or we listen to characters give away the plot which means the climax is very much spoon fed to the audience which is something of a shame since while not being a truly great thriller WHITE SANDS deserves to be remembered more than it really is . I guess the dislodge heavy last act conspires to make this a very forgettable movie

(spoilers)I bought the score for this film in December 1996 at an Only Deals store. for about 50 cents. It took me 7 1/2 years to finally watch the movie. I love the score. The movie wasn't bad though. It required some brain activity to watch. Mickey Rourke playing a bad guy. But he seemed to have a consience. I liked it. Too bad I didn't watch it in 1992 when it came out7/10 Quality: 5/10 Entertainment: 8/10 Replayable: 6/10

The plot is extremely lame even for a suspense movie. Viewers' high expectation easily turns into disappointment.Here is also one of Defoe's worst performances. Maybe he shouldn't have tried to smile and grin "a la Rourke"; or maybe the poor guy is just embarassed silly by the implausible and contrived story. Samuel Jackson, in his pre-Pulp-Fiction existence, suffers from a sad lack of screen presence. On the other hand, Rourke's "charisma", if you choose to call his oily self that, proves to be indestructable. But why bother?4 out of 10.