Paranoia thriller without a milliwatt of power to compel belief. Mel Gibson, reunited with his Lethal Weapon director, Richard Donner, is an addlepated Manhattan cabbie, loonier than Taxi Driver's Travis Bickle, who puts out a newsletter of exposés on the order of "The Oliver Stone-George Bush Connection." (Number of subscribers: five.) But somebody, for some reason, wants him dead. Donner, no one's notion of an auteur, pays homage to himself by having the hero take refuge from his unnumbered pursuers in a packed movie theater playing Ladyhawke, although it's a Hitchcock film -- Torn Curtain -- from which he steals the idea of starting a stampede with a single shouted word. (A bad idea even in the Hitchcock.) Indeed the movie comes across as a kind of Frankenstein's monster stitched together, and very sloppily, from parts of other thrillers. It has a slow set-up, a muddy middle, and a mushy finish. With Julia Roberts, Patrick Stewart, Cylk Cozart. (1997) — Duncan Shepherd
This movie is not currently in theaters.