"The Package" is a very exciting film, though I must also admit it's not exactly the most logical! My advice is that if you see, just turn off that nagging part of your brain that sees plot holes...otherwise it might just take you out of the movie.

When the story begins, some Soviet and American officials and military are having some meeting in the countryside near Berlin. During this meeting, a group of soldiers are keeping an eye on the perimeter when some 'backpackers' arrive...and are soon arrested. However, soon the backpackers are inexplicably almost immediately released and the pair are really assassins who kill several of the military men as they're leaving this meeting. Obviously there is some sort of conspiracy going on here. But this is just the first of MANY conspiracies and many folks being something other than they appear to be....and the plot goes from Germany to Chicago of all places.

So how do the main characters fit into all this? Well, I could try to explain it but suffice to say that three people see there's some sort of conspiracy and the conspiracy takes itself to Chicago...to somehow disrupt a historic peace treaty between the US and USSR designed at complete nuclear disarmament.

While Gene Hackman and the rest do a fine job and the acting is never a problem, the plot doesn't make a lot of sense. Dozens (or more) folks are behind this conspiracy and they have infiltrated the military, police and God knows what else. They also KNOW who the three are who are trying to stop them, whereas the three know who almost none of these people are...and yet the three are going to stop this plot?! This doesn't make sense...nor does it make sense that they never try to involve the FBI, CIA or even the local chapter of the Boy Scouts! It's just three ill-informed heroes against a weird murderous cabal!! Now THAT is a serious plot problem in an otherwise enjoyable film!

Kind of an enjoyable, undemanding political thriller in which Tommy Lee Jones is a hired assassin and Gene Hackman is an Army sergeant who tries to find him, while he himself is hunted by the police after being framed for a murder.

There are predictable elements in the plot. A car chase through the streets of Chicago, a bloody assassination in Germany, Russians who scowl and look like albino prunes, Nazi thugs, bullets through the forehead, a sniper with a very professional looking rifle, a patsy, a vast right-wing conspiracy involving the Army, the Chicago police, and some independent agents.

Actually, the plot lost me here and there. (Why did Jones have to be smuggled into the USA under a false identity?) But it doesn't matter. Things roll right along, with fine location shooting in a bleak Chicago winter. Those snowy windy deserted alleys will freeze your eyeballs for you.

Hackman has never damaged a film he's been in. Tommy Lee Jones is unique in his delivery. Joanna Cassidy has a face full of character. Hardy Kruger looks just as he did 30 years ago. What happened to his career? He's hardly on screen here, and is only given two lines, one of them in Russian. And he was so good in "Sundays and Cybele." Dennis Franz contributes an authentic Chicago accent, which somehow manages to transmogrify the word "car" into "care". All of which is to say the acting is quite good.

It's a relatively realistic movie too. Nobody performs superhero stunts. Hackman is the hero and yet is flawed enough to get beaned over the head and, later, captured. Nobody leaps tall buildings in a single bound. There are no exploding fireballs or heads. The narrative is straightforward and unadorned by slow-motion deaths or fancy photography. The director has shown a bit of taste.

If you're not in the mood to have your thought provoked or your emotions gripped, this is a good movie to watch, as you while away your time.

As the cold war starts to thaw the leaders of the United States and the Soviet Union are on the brink of signing an historic treaty that will lead to the scrapping of their nuclear arsenals… not everybody wants this to happen though; certain members of the military on both sides are determined to scupper the treaty. To this end Sgt. Gallagher is tasked with escorting prisoner Walter Henke from West Berlin to the US; to him it is a routine if somewhat tedious task but it soon becomes clear that it is anything but routine. His prisoner is helped to escape at the airport and when Gallagher goes to see the man's wife he learns that he wasn't Walter Henke! He goes to see his ex-wife, an army colonel, to see if she can help him get to the bottom of it; she and her assistant manage to find out that the man's real name is Thomas Boyette and he has a military record linking him to a series of war zones. Gallagher soon finds himself framed for the murder of Henke's wife so must go on the run with his ex. They follow the trail to Chicago where they meet up with policeman Lt. Milan Delich, an old friend of Gallagher's. As they get closer to Boyette they get in increasing danger as the conspirators are determined to stop them preventing Boyette from carrying out his mission.

This is a solid cold war thriller made when relationships between east and west were improving but nobody suspected that the Soviet Union would shortly cease to exist. Gene Hackman does a good job as Sgt. Gallagher and Tommy Lee Jones is fine as Boyette. The story is a bit far-fetched but if you can suspend your disbelief it is fairly gripping. There is a sense of paranoia as Gallagher has very few people he can trust and many of those who aren't actually bad think he is! There isn't a huge amount of over the top action but what there is, is fairly exciting and fairly believable. If you enjoy thrillers that have some mystery but aren't too convoluted you should enjoy this.