Ceticultsot Beautiful, moving film.

Sexyloutak Absolutely the worst movie.

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

Jonah Abbott There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

Semisonic As they like to say, war never changes. Apparently, the same goes to the civil wars. But does it mean that wealthy people are tired of watching the poor people die fighting each other? Hell no! Especially if that happens in some tropic paradise like Nicaragua.Under Fire sells itself as a gritty and unsweetened drama about people whose profession is to be the constant witness of everything ugly that's happening in the world - the war journalists. But not only we are offered the graphic horrors of the wartime, we are also promised the non-compromising story of a love triangle that takes place right in the middle of the hot zone.Given the fact that such a promising dish is served by masters like Gene Hackman, Nick Nolte and Ed Harris, who have two Oscar wins and ten nominations between themselves, one may expect a truly deep and pleasant cinematic experience. And there is nothing in the world that could stop Under Fire from being one. Yeah, nothing... but its own lazy flaws.It might seem that the story of two reporters from the hot spots - a female journalist Claire and a male photographer Russel - falling in love with each other, while Claire is being fancied by yet another journalist Alex, smart and striking but not swaggy and risky enough, is totally failproof. Just show them running around and doing their thing while the war is going on - and the profits will be ripe for taking.At least that's the impression this movie leaves. That the filmmakers were a bit too confident that the supplied ingredients were more than enough and decided not to put some real soul or at least coherence into the movie. The plot is so thin it's almost nonexistent, so that our heroes have to move from one random location to another, meet and follow random people hoping that it would bring some important revelations, with Nick Nolte's character constantly taking pictures of every little thing he sees, simply because he has no goddamn clue what he's looking for.As a result, the movie is a chaotic change of settings with too many people that come and go as they please, and the film doesn't even try to properly introduce them to the audience, not to mention to actually get inside their heads. The revolution is reduced to sporadic gunfights and a demonstration of a military hardware. The dictator is diminished to a flatter-than-paper ragdoll that is only suitable for hugging babes and doing short press conferences. Even the love triangle story is laughable, since Gene Hackman's character's love for Claire never goes beyond a few stiff and dry phrases, and, as Russel makes his move, he conveniently retreats. Totally not what i expected from the actor famous for portraying the hard-as-nails badasses from Unforgiven or The French Connection.At its climax, Under Fire tries to redeem itself sending a somewhat powerful message: that the strong of this world don't give a damn about the weak's suffering, but only interfere if their own interests are involved. Very true, and the modern history never stops proving it. But despite all these virtues, it still feels that the movie took a lazy shortcut delivering that message, simply proclaiming it verbally instead of letting us feel it through less explicit and more artistic ways. When the filmmakers, after having almost two hours of intimacy with the audience, resort to crude and direct means to say what they consider important, it is like a synonym of admitting your own failure at cinematic expressiveness.The only truly redeeming feature of this film is Ed Harris' character, cheerful and opportunistic mercenary who never takes things too personal and shoots at anything and anyone he's paid to shoot at. That big American smile and optimistic mannerisms do a better job - showing the true ugly face of any war and that the whole First World is a vulture preying on whatever's up for grabs - than the combined efforts of the rest of the cast.Unfortunately, that was the only really biting satire that made its way into this movie, despite the huge potential and initial promise. Just like Nick Nolte's character helplessly driving the streets of Managua, first in search of something worth to be shot on his camera and then trying to get back to the hotel, Under Fire is completely helpless at driving itself home as a decent drama, with only a handful of strong elements to push it above the level of mediocre cinema.

parsec1 Been there... used the powered rewinds on my Nikon F2as cameras and my right thumb to wind on my black Leica M4 ...while being shot at in Londonderry Northern Ireland 1981. Seems like Nick Nolte had practised this and it looked like second nature to him in the movie. Very Very 'cool stuff'. Dramatic atmosphere real life characters tension and lots of used film cannisters. Brilliantly cast Gene Hackman as the 'wordsmith' Well filmed action sequences and tightly scripted scenes Ed Harris well cast as mercenary(I've met a few) Praise to Roger Spottiswood for getting it absolutely right.

steveoinsd Remember those awful low budget WWII movies with Sherman tanks masquerading as German Panzers and German soldiers running around looking for a bullet to hit them. That's what the opening scenes of this movie brought to mind. Rebel African soldiers moving through the Chad countryside riding, wait for it... "Indian" Elephants, are attacked by a spindly rocket-firing helicopter and later a wing-mounted-machine-gun firing DC3. What? Nick Nolte as fearless reporter stands up on top of a 3-ton truck to get a better shot of being shot while Ed Harris in the guise of grizzled veteran mercenary inexplicably takes shelter underneath. Pure hogwash. Unfortunately they still do make them like they used to. Oh and Gene Hackman later sings and plays piano. Other highlights: Gun-toting, graffiti-writing masked mimes (I'm not making this up) That was all I could stand.

Robert J. Maxwell Basically it's the story of a journalist's gradually being coopted by one side in a conflict. He's not supposed to let that happen, you know? Reporters belong to a class of professionals that subscribe to a code of ethics in which making value judgments has no place. In that respect they're like shrinks, judges, and cultural anthropologists.But at the same time it's impossible to be impartial, unless you're completely ignorant of your subject. The tendency to judge things as "good" or "bad" is probably hard wired in human nature, and for good reasons. When our hominid ancestors first encountered a strange object or situation, they must have made instant decisions about whether this was going to turn out to be good or bad for them -- otherwise they'd get eaten and not have any more kids.Nick Nolte does what most professionals do. He tries to think objectively about the conflict between the Sandinistas and Samoza's forces in Nicaragua, and he fails. Then he tries to merely ACT objectively, and he fails at that too. And yet the movie, and the revolution it depicts, turns on the one true photo Nolte is able to take, of the shooting death of his friend Hackman by the National Guard, which Samoza has been blaming on the Sandinistas. The rebels win.The movie's pedantic, of course, but not as insulting as it might be. Not as insulting as, say, Costa-Gavras' "Missing," which assumes that Americans are stereotypical right-wing dummies who need to be patiently instructed in how corrupt our policies are, like a class of kindergarten kids. Okay, we're dumb -- but not THAT dumb. "Under Fire" doesn't show us any good guys on Samoza's side, but it also mutes the sentimentality with which the rebels are treated. We see some of them as scared and excited kids wielding guns and killing people for no discernible reason. Another woman tells the dead Hackman's ex girl friend, "Fifty thousand Nicaraguans have died. Now they kill one American and the world is outraged. Maybe we should have killed an American fifty years ago." (I give the writers the benefit of the doubt and assume they never meant to advance that as an reasonable position.) Yet the rebels ARE treated rather gently. One young man, finding that Nolte and Cassidy are Americans, eagerly signs a baseball and tells them that when they get back to the USA they should give the ball to Dennis Martinez, whom I take to be a pro ball player. This kid, Pedro I think he's called, shows us the jolly side of revolution. He's the equivalent of those kids in the old war movies who learn to speak a choppy English with a lot of slang in it. And who do we have on the other side? Samoza himself, another "brutal dictator" of the sort we've lately taken to deposing. We can tell he's nasty because he barks at his subordinates, exudes an oily charm with foreigners, and has an eye for the ladies. Trintignant has an eye for the ladies too. He has been an extraordinary actor in some roles (eg., "The Conformist"), his presence suggesting a kind of earnest weakness, but here his moral nihilist is hampered by his English. It's understandable that he should feel that whichever side wins, you still end up with a tyrant, but it's hard to believe he feels it. And then we have Richard Masur as an American-appointed Talking Chief for Samoza. He gives Nicaragua two options: Either Samoza wins with American help, solves the problem of poverty, and turns Nicaragua into a democracy, or the Communists take over the world. When the news comes out that Hackman has been killed, Masur runs into Cassidy, smiles, spreads his arms helplessly, and tells her, "A human tragedy. What can I say?" Then there is Ed Harris as the American mercenary, cheerfully slaughtering the rebels he's being paid to kill, thick skinned, just as pleased when the Sandinistas win as he was before.The film makers don't exactly give us a level playing field, but then how could they without seeming ridiculous? Samoza, after all, was a pretty nasty guy. (Somebody finally caught up with him after he found refuge in Florida, as I recall.)The acting is good, all around, as is the photography and location shooting.What a dismal and dangerous place. And journalists have to prowl these streets for a living. Even a cover on Time Magazine wouldn't get me to drive around the rubble filled streets of Managua. Or even Newark, New Jersey, for that matter. Excellent use is made of Jerry Goldsmith's score. It's introduced after some time, done softly, a tune suggestive of Inca music, using wooden flutes and guitar. The theme becomes more fully orchestrated later, more dramatic and insistent. It's always associated with the rebels and at the end, when the rebels roll through the streets, it does everything but turn into the 1812 Overture.This is for adults. Most of the characters are more real than stereotypical. Look at Joanna Cassidy. She's not a glossy Penthouse centerfold. She's a grown-up with an adult daughter and thoughtful blue eyes. And although we naturally want the Sandinistas to win, we have to wonder if Nolte did the right thing in falsely boosting the morale of the guerillas. By cheating and by taking sides, he's weakened the privileged status of journalists everywhere. It's a thought-provoking movie, and full of action. Well done.