Let's be realistic.

Excellent, Without a doubt!!

The biggest problem with this movie is it’s a little better than you think it might be, which somehow makes it worse. As in, it takes itself a bit too seriously, which makes most of the movie feel kind of dull.

Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

I was going to rate this movie a 6, but at the last minute gave it an 8 instead, because I saw it for the first time on cable a week ago, and I can't stop thinking about it.there are definitely "plot holes you could drive a truck through," as they say. the biggest one is something other reviewers have noted. Debra Winger's character Katie/Cathy is forced to go back and continue her undercover work (pun intended) several times, even though there's PLENTY of information to convict all of these people on multiple charges many times over. I guess it's good to know the FBI is so scrupulous about the "righteousness of their busts" but seriously...!other people have mentioned the "night hunt" scene. I watch a lot of movies, horror movies especially, but I have to say that this was one of the only times I've ever literally watched a scene with my jaw hanging open. I got the impression that the crimes were supposed to "ramp up" somehow throughout the movie and get more and more serious, but the hunt scene was far more awful than anything that came after.the movie is beautifully filmed. one scene in particular caught my eye: it's early in the courtship of Gary and Katie, and they've just come back into his house through the front door, which is still open. they stand facing each other, the farmland beyond framed by the door, and the trees all blowing in the wind. I finally figured out that it reminded me of that great (and very windy) scene in "The Quiet Man" and borrowed by "ET" with John Wayne and Maureen O'Hara. I do not know if that was deliberate on the part of the filmmaker, but it was really pretty either way.

After the brutal gun-down of a radio disc jockey, an FBI agent goes undercover in the search of white supremacists planning something big. But things get complicated when she falls in love with her target along with his children. A well meaning, if humid political drama, but it comes across rather heavy-handed and convoluted in its message making it far from entertaining to watch. Interesting, but only in parts and there's a real bitter tone evident. However profound, multi-facet performances by leads Debra Winger and Tom Berenger with a capable support cast; John Heard, Betsy Blair and John Mahoney keep it grounded. After a simple set-up, it show its dark underbelly and truthfully embraces it as our protagonist thinks she knows the man, but isn't really prepared and finds herself right in the deep end. The outrageous climax is baffling and some moments seem to lull during the family interactions, but these sequences are important to building character and illustrating the unnerving nature of racism (like the camp-out scenes)."Whose side are you on?"

Let's focus on the film from a different perspective.Despite the movie helps us to understand the circumstances lead to racism,it also represents "how a good racist should be". He should be a family man,should reject Neo-Nazis' ideas when they are trying to sell him guns in a camp by saying "my father fought against Nazis in WWII".thus showing a moral man Director leads to misunderstanding reluctantly with the character Gary Simmons that appears to be a good man with all his faults grew up in an environment which makes him the leader of a terrorist organization.Still, it's a drama master-piece especially with final scenes

I generally find Costa-Gavras' works kind of hard to swallow because I gag on the pedagogy. Too many of his films are like Capra's "Why We Fight" propaganda movies from World War II. Here is the enemy. (It's always a right-wing conspiracy.) See how evil he is? And see how naive you cretins in the audience are for not having realized it? My God, what a nag he is. I don't like being preached to even when the sermon matches the prejudices I already hold.But this movie is an exception. For the first and perhaps the last time on any stage, ladies and gentleman, the director shows us some ambiguity in the characters.Yes, it's true. No doubt the evil on display is thoroughly rotten, the home-grown variety of racists and terrorists along the lines of Timothy McVeigh, the New World Order paranoids, the fluoride-in-the-water loonies, and the survivalists who have moved off the grid into the mountains of Idaho. But they're not that extreme. They're the salt of the earth. They go to church regularly, believe in God, treat their women with respect, fall in love, form bonds with each other, have suffered in the past, and have hope for the future. They just happen to hate blacks, Jews, commies, and fags, that's all. They're perfectly normal except that they have these encapsulated brain tumors that contain attitudes instead of cancerous tissue. Debra Winger is an FBI agent assigned to infiltrate a community of farmers in the Midwest who may be up to no good. She thinks the assignment is a washout and she falls for the simple, God-fearing son of the soil, Tom Berenger, who has a cuddly young daughter. Berenger falls for her too and proposes marriage.But things begin to pop up that are a little disturbing. The little girl spontaneously spouts apocalyptic racist nonsense that she is too young to understand. Berenger opens up to her little by little, taking her on a very strange hunt, a picnic involving happy campers with Uzis, and what is revealed isn't entirely congruous with Winger's picture of Berenger as an uncomplicated farmer. Eventually, finally trusting her, he tells her about a plan to generate a general uprising by assassinating celebrities and committing mass murders in Harlem and San Francisco and "Sick-ago", as he calls it. Berenger and his friends are full of an unfocused bitterness that the director leaves unexplained. So far, so Cost-Gavras. And here's where it's different. The director develops Tom Berenger as a fully fleshed-out character, and Debra Winger too. When she is finally forced to shoot him, it is because he has found out her real identity and now he WANTS her to kill him. Suicide by FBI. His belief and trust in her is sufficiently profound that when it's shattered, there is really nothing left for him to live for, not even his precious cause. And the same is true for Winger. She has no family because, "The FBI was my family." But they have manipulated her ruthlessly and are unable to see any human dimensions in what they consider just another operation that in the end is more or less successful. She plunks down her badge and gun and goes on what appears to be a cross-country binge before pulling herself together and seeking out Berenger's daughter. Cost-Gavras as HUMANIST! Even the title is dual-faceted. Berenger's group of subversive farmers has betrayed its own country's ideals, but Winger has betrayed the man she loves.At that, though, Costa-Gavras hasn't got quite a handle on the subtleties of the political issues. He throws every liberal bete-noir into the pot. A reactionary politician spews out the usual menu of racist nonsense but can also be heard pimping nuclear power and so forth. If he read the message boards on Yahoo, Morningstar, or anywhere else, he'd realize that no reactionaries are in favor of nuclear power. Nobody is FOR nuclear power. Some liberals are opposed to it, but paleoconservatives argue in its favor only in contexts that will irritate the liberals. Well, let's not make too much of a little background speech-making by a minor figure.This is a pretty good movie, in fact. The familiar parts of it -- the naive investigator finally being wised up to fascist conpiracies -- is more than compensated for by the added dimensionality of the two leads.But just to make sure you get the point, Costa-Gavras, perhaps feeling that he's been speaking over our heads, plays a song under the end credits -- "The Pistol in the Drawer is the Devil's Right Hand." Got it? Good.