Starring: Sean Connery and Ian McShane
Grade: F
The tagline for the poster should’ve read, “Sean Connery is the “Scandinavian Dirty Harry” in The Terrorists“.
Summary
In Scandinavia at the Department of the Interior, Captain Frank Barnes (Jeffry Wickham) barges into a phone conversation Bernhard (James Maxwell) is having with the Prime Minister about how the most recent handling of the terrorist attacks are getting out of hand. Before Bernhard can give Barnes shit for the British’s work thus far, Barnes hands him a paper with the face of Martin Shepard (John Quentin) on it. Apparently, he’s the guy they’ve been looking for. He’s the leader of a terrorist group in England. Over the past few years, he’s been responsible for the killing of almost one hundred people. Bernhard reminds Barnes that Shepard has been holding British Ambassador Palmer (Robert Harris) as a hostage since yesterday. Barnes has been talking to the terrorists however, so he shows Bernhard a recording of his phone call with them. The unknown terrorist on the recording, presumably Shepard, says that the British government has been holding five of his associates. If they want Palmer back, they need to release these men and allow them to fly to Amsterdam. Once these terms are complied with, a military aircraft has to be dropped off for him to use, and parachutes have to be provided. If they don’t acquiesce to his demands within 12 hours, he will execute one of the hostages. Barnes tells Bernhard that the British government is already in the process of releasing the five men without any resistance.
Bernhard is surprised at this but passes it off as a British affair rather than a Scandinavian one. Barnes does ask for the Scandinavian government’s help on the parachutes and aircraft though. He agrees to it but says his head of security Col. Nils Tahlvik (Connery) will be briefed on the situation. Barnes is fine with this because he’s friends with Tahlvik, but Bernhard tells him that Tahlvik is going to consider this solution as them surrendering, and he’s not going to like it.
Sometime after, Tahlvik and Barnes go to the house of British Ambassador Palmer to meet with the terrorists. They see the ambassador sitting in the chair. All the terrorists are wearing pantyhose on their heads and look like morons. Barnes tells them they’ve agreed to everything, and the five men are already on a plane to Amsterdam. Shepard still says he’ll have to verify with them once they’ve landed. Secondly, he reminds Barnes about the parachutes. Shepards tell them Palmer will need a parachute as well because they’re taking him, and he will be left at the dropping zone. After they escape, they will be told where the dropping zone is. Everything seems to be fine, but Tahlvik wants Palmer’s house servants to be released at the airport. He refuses to have them board the plane. Shepard doesn’t answer when they leave. Once they get out of the house, Barnes tells Tahlvik they know where Shepard and his crew will bail out with the parachutes based off of their intel from London. This is where they can nab him. After they avoid the media outside, Barnes tells Tahlvik the bail zone’s code name is “Marigold” and apologizes for not telling him sooner. The two go through Shepard’s case files, and Barnes points out all the crimes he’s been behind but hasn’t been arrested because of lack of evidence. However, he thinks he has him this time because he has Shepard’s voice on tape.
Inside, the terrorists call the five men who have landed in Amsterdam. They confirm their plans and how everything with Marigold will go on as planned too.
Unbeknownst to them, the phone was tapped, and Tahlvik and Barnes listened to the whole conversation.
On a plane, Ray Petrie (McShane) hijacks a commercial plane discreetly, forcing the flight attendant by gunpoint to take him straight to Captain Denver (Norman Bristow) and his co-pilot. Right away, Petrie tells him the plane is rigged to explode. He has Denver land on the runway furthest from the terminal buildings. However, when Denver touches the ground, he does so aggressively to purposely mess with the landing gear and it starts a mini-fire, prompting the watch tower to automatically call in the fire department. Denver pushes down even harder to the point that the watch tower labels it a “crash alarm”. He takes it over to the far runway, and one of Petrie’s cohorts marches into the cockpit. He points out that Denver purposely took off the anti-skid. Petrie isn’t happy. He tells Denver there are four of them, and they’re all wearing watches with a detonator that can blow up the plane in two seconds. He makes it very clear he has no problem in blowing this thing up along with himself.
At Shepard’s place, they’re about to come out with the hostages and everyone readies themselves. From the plane, Petrie calls Shepard and tells them Marigold is blown and the police know everything, including the dropping zone. Petrie tells Shepard he’s hijacked a plane to get him out, but he tells him to not leave Palmer’s house with the hostages yet. He says the cops have “Chris” and have been swarming Marigold, waiting for them to show up. The hostages were already being taken into a van, so Shepard runs out and has his guys bring everyone back in. He alerts his group on what’s going on and how they just need to wait on Petrie. Palmer uses this opportunity to talk shit to Shepard and point out how his fate lies in another man’s hands, but a visibly worried Shepard doesn’t want to hear it. Back on the plane, Petrie tells the passengers they are in no danger but since Denver took off the anti-skid and blew all the tires, they have to temporarily detain them before they can be fixed. He alerts the passengers to his cohorts and tells them to obey their instructions, keep calm, and stay seated. Within a few hours, everything should be fine.
Tahlvik and Barnes meet with Bernhard and a general. Bernhard tells them that the hijackers wish to exchange the passengers on the plane for the terrorists in Palmer’s house. Bernhard suggests they agree to it because they don’t want to get involved in other nation’s problems, but Tahlvik refuses because it would make them look weak and could set them up for future incidents similar to this one. The general agrees. Privately, he tells Tahlvik that the situation with Palmer was a British thing, but the hijacking will be a Scandinavian thing. He tells Tahlvik to delay their surrender to the last possible moment and gives him the job of trying to overcome the hijackers, but he can’t endanger the life of a single passenger. Tahlvik asks what they should do with Bernhard, but the general tells him to “try diplomacy. If that fails, improvise”. The general tells Tahlvik he’s in charge. This mission will be a tough one, but Tahlvik welcomes the challenge. However, things will become more difficult once they realize how smart Petrie seems to be. On top of that, Tahlvik has to deal with pushback from some higher-up officials who don’t agree with his aggressive methods.
My Thoughts:
It all starts with the title. Is it The Terrorists or Ransom? Depending on what country you live in, it could be called either. This may seem irrelevant to bring up, but I wanted to set up my disdain for this movie. Let me ask you, would you rather choose the next-level generic title of the former, or the latter title that was used for the 1996 Mel Gibson thriller that is a thousand times better than this movie? Either way, The Terrorists loses, and you will lose if you watch it. Other than the casting of Sean Connery and Ian McShane as adversaries, nothing else was done right. Considering the circumstances of a movie consisting of hijackings, terrorists, hostages, and tough guy Sean Connery refusing to lay down to the bad guys, this was a surprisingly awful and downright forgettable endeavor.
Why was this so boring? Well, most of the film’s big moments consist of the red tape of the government officials, and Tahlvik arguing with people and setting up missions he’s not even going on himself. Most of the movie is a chess match between the hero and villain and though this idea could work if it was intense enough, The Terrorists isn’t. If Tahlvik himself is the man doing a little bit of both, I could be somewhat interested in what’s going on, but most of what is done is Tahlvik setting up things from his tower and watching it unfold to see if it worked. If something doesn’t work, he rushes to another room and tries to figure out another solution. With a guy like Connery in the starring role, I needed more for him to do to raise the excitement levels of the story. A subplot or more action sequences in general were desperately needed, but what we got instead was so dull, it brought down the potential of what could’ve been a gripping narrative. By the time we get to the explosive finish, it’s good, but it was way too late to save the movie. I can’t recommend any film where the only thing worth watching is the last ten minutes. No one should have to sit through a movie that long to be entertained. A majority of the film is just characters arguing over what to do next. This includes the bad guys, the good guys, and with each other. There needs to be more developments of some kind to keep things fresh. There needs to be something to help the pacing.
If the goal was to contain this much arguing between characters, then at the very least, those arguments could’ve been a little more interesting or better written.
More needed to be done in all facets. It’s as simple as that.
One of the very few things I did like was the news report’s characterization of how Tahlvik is all about business. I liked how they explained he arrested somebody while serving in a peace keeping force in Cyprus. It was a funny backstory as to who he is, along with Tahlvik getting Petrie’s first round of demands and leaving the room without agreeing to piss him off and waste time.
SPOILERS
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I thought the plot twists were handled exceedingly poor.
From the start, you could tell with how smug Barnes is, he has something to do with the bad guys and the ending, especially when Tahlvik points out how peculiar it is that Petrie, who has a known association with Shepard by those in government, has managed to fly into the same area as Shepard’s hostage situation without being stopped in the first place. He just says something along the lines of, “That’s weird”. From the opening scene, he looks suspicious and this initial uncovering from Tahlvik only confirms it later on.
Secondly, Petrie loses his menacing demeanor as soon as he catches Tahlvik’s guy trying to enter the plane and doesn’t shoot him. He just lets him go and warns him to not do it again. Petrie’s lookout was even spotted, and he doesn’t retaliate. Petrie promises to kill, but you can tell they’re all empty threats. If he was any sort of serious as a villain, Tahlvik’s guy would be dead at the very least. I understand there’s reasoning to all of this, as it’s explained in the big reveal that Petrie is an undercover agent working for the British government, but there’s a few things wrong with this. Now, I do concede it was an interesting twist, but the suspense is taken out of the movie when Petrie doesn’t try to kill that first agent. He doesn’t do anything to try to trick the audience into thinking he’s legitimate other than throw out empty death threats after that. Also, if he’s an undercover agent, then this would make him a good guy. Why wouldn’t they tell Tahlvik about this ahead of time? They could’ve avoided all of this had they explained this to Bernhard in the opening that they have a man on the inside, and they’ll stop Shepard (who they all want dead) if they are given the aircraft and such.
The whole point is to capture an actual terrorist, so I don’t see how the officials couldn’t cooperate on it if all the facts were laid on the table, especially because we’ve seen these agreements happen in EVERY OTHER MOVIE EVER! Thirdly, let’s say they go through things how it happens, and Tahlvik finds out in the manner in which he did. At this point of in the film, before he gets into the plane, he’s aware that Petrie is a government agent. Technically, Petrie is a good guy on a mission. So, why in the fuck does Tahlvik out Petrie, forcing him to shoot Shepard? Why does Tahlvik attack Petrie? They’re on the same side! They’re trying to capture the bad guy! Why would Tahlvik try to kill Petrie like he’s trying to save Shepard when he shot the son of a bitch in front of him? Is it just because Tahlvik’s ego was hurt that he wasn’t let it on the full scope of the mission, or that he had to admit defeat in front of his co-workers for the first time? Does this really all come down to ego, to the point where he attacked someone also in law enforcement, inherently doing a good thing he was assigned to do? This ending doesn’t make sense at all! Tahlvik goes about trying to be the “Scandinavian Dirty Harry”, but his actions would cause an international incident in a real situation, and it would end with him (and his government) looking like absolute jackasses.
They even handled the villain stuff wrong. Martin Shepard is supposed to be the leader of this terrorist group that everyone is so desperately out to catch, but he acts like a bitch from the jump. He’s supposed to be this experienced bad guy who’s responsible for numerous bombings and serious criminal activity, but he looks worried the entire time because of Petrie’s handling of the situation. If anything, he should be angry at Petrie and flipping out constantly at Palmer’s house. He’s the terrifying leader, right? Well, he doesn’t act like it at all! He even treats Palmer pretty well for having him as a hostage. Not once does he attack him, despite a decent amount of shit-talking coming from Palmer’s mouth. He doesn’t look nor act nearly as evil as Petrie does. Why is it that Petrie, who’s secretly an undercover agent, look like a better evil mastermind than the actual terrorist? It makes all the lines fuzzy to the point where you want everyone on the plane to get shot (and they do). What follows is an ending so abrupt, it just reminds you of the pure unsatisfaction the entire production brought as a whole.
The Terrorists has a plot done better by a thousand other movies with superior casts, acting, directing, writing, and events for the characters to get through. Other than the fact that Sean Connery is in this movie, there’s no other reason to watch this.
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