Well Deserved Praise

A lot of fun.

It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

There's a more than satisfactory amount of boom-boom in the movie's trim running time.

The really merits more of 2 and 3/4 stars, for the most part, it is adequately proficient for a low budget made for TV (with problems such as the exceedingly slow car chase, the equally exceedingly limited amount of action for an 'action/thriller' genre film) and is only hurt further by the very predictable elements thrown in (an entire spy agency takes forever - and fails to trace a phone, but the bad guy in the bad frosted hair job finds the phone in a bathhouse almost instantaneously?) further weaken the willingness to give credit for the cast and crew being somewhat game.There's no chemistry between the actors and the performances, even from a known elements such as Rhys-Davies, are perfunctory at best. Ian Roberts is a very attractive man, but is wasted as a heavy, in a role typically given to stunt men who want to act, as an example of where the performances fail. The low budget elements (such as the makeup job on the lead's lover after the darkroom attack by the bad guys) are seriously, albeit unintentionally laughable.This might have been more successful if they gone for a camp and fun spy conception, as Clive Owen did for his part in the Steve Martin version of the Pink Panther, or the David Niven (Bond) version of Casino Royale. Instead, this looks and feels like a TV pilot that a network spent some money on and then realized it didn't deserve to be picked up for a full season.

2 titles that don't suit the film...while The Delphi Effect is slightly better for a title, it doesn't hold much to it.A far better title would be "Mind Rape" or something more appealing tot he story.Anyway, it's not a bad film - a little cheesy on the action and some scenes - but it entertains.No huge intense story here, no massive action fight scenes - which would have helped.This is the film's first review and quite possibly it's only one and it could have been a bit more mysterious - but it's far better than many I've seen this week.