Hits the ground running and never looks back. But after an hour of propulsive pacing the shock value wears off, and all that's left is pop-up carnage.

A genuine rarity: a sex comedy with brains.

There's so little urgency to the plot that one eventually feels not even the actors and filmmakers believe for a second in what's going on.

It's ultimately a losing battle when the audience's lack of interest in eastern Europeans is assumed at the outset.

The animation is remarkable, except for the stiff, marionettelike humans.

Has some flavor, and Ron Silver gives a swell impersonation of a cool and slimy studio executive.

As old-fashioned movie fun, this isn't bad, even -- especially? -- when it skirts the edge of silliness, and it's better than the 1960 George Pal version.

The whole movie feels stiff and awkward whenever the actors stop chasing each other long enough to talk.

Though the questionable motives and bad planning of offscreen characters who far outrank Gibson make it difficult to take at face value one soldier's last words -- "I'm glad I could die for my country" -- some viewers will, which may be as the filmmakers intended.

An early voice-over segment about the Casbah itself, before Gabin makes an appearance, is so pungent you can almost taste the place, even though the filming was clearly done in a studio.

The direction is so muted and sentimental and the pacing so soporific that only Ciarian Tanham's saturated color cinematography of the sylvan countryside breaks the monotony.

This is smooth and at times even sensual -- a well-oiled machine.

There are many plot complications, most designed to get us to applaud our tolerance of religious differences.

Howard lacks the sense of film rhythm --required to make such an exercise work. Just about the only clear triumph here is an underplayed performance by Angie Dickinson, though Winger and Rosanna Arquette also provide welcome relief from Howard and Le Mat's self-indulgent carousing.

Mildly exciting sports-in-prison movie.

We're never allowed to feel much of anything for these characters, and as a result their agonizing over their lost past and uncertain future seems like whining.

The result is an exploitation movie that seems like it's about something -- though what exactly I couldn't say.

The film is full of finely observed details.

A late radical shift in tone, from jittery exuberance to ruinous alienation, strikes an impressive contemporary note amid all the obeisance to custom.

Costner has an uncanny aptitude for gravitating toward the dopiest projects in sight, but this time he's outdone himself.

A mildly psychological suspense thriller with military trappings.

When the cast is shown during the final credits repeatedly cracking up in blown takes, one would like to think they were laughing at some of the lines they were expected to deliver.

A standard mix of performances, interviews, and gimmickry -- the image and sound sometimes loop or jump in a tiresomely literal attempt to translate the techniques of scratching and "beat juggling" into cinema.

Though there's a crime to be solved, a romance to go awry, and lots of trooper-police politics to elaborate on, the strangely drawn out pacing somehow feels fresh rather than oppressive.

This is truly a great film, recently celebrated at length in "My Voyage to Italy," Martin Scorsese's documentary about Italian cinema.

Stylistically lively and generally well acted. Thematically, however, it's somewhat incoherent.

Grossly unimaginative.

Ludicrous revenge thriller.