What a waste of my time!!!

Good start, but then it gets ruined

It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.

There is just so much movie here. For some it may be too much. But in the same secretly sarcastic way most telemarketers say the phrase, the title of this one is particularly apt.

My suspicions that the 1990s were the worst decade for film are confirmed with this absolutely atrocious travelogue-cum-thriller which wastes the talents of rising star Russell Crowe in an painfully awful piece of predictable filmmaking. Writer/director Frank A. Cappello is the guy responsible for this monstrosity and I don't know what he was thinking, because as a coherent film it's awful.The movie opens with future starlet Kelly Hu dispatching a room of bland bad guys before Crowe, playing a wisecracking cop, gets involved. His job takes him to Japan and back again while he has to contend with a kidnapping (that doesn't seem to phase him too much) and gets saddled with a stewardess (Helen Slater) who might well be the worst supporting female role ever put in a film. It's not just that Slater is terrible (although she is), but her character is even more irritating than Erika Eleniak's in UNDER SIEGE, and that's saying something.Despite the relative shortness of the running time, the plot meanders along with one cringe-inducing gag after another. The action sequences, despite reoccurring at regular intervals, are terribly handled and watch out for the excruciating bit of FX work when a helicopter crashes. The film increasingly tries your patience as it progresses so that by the end I was half sleep, barely aware of the credits rolling; never a good sign!

The one thing positive to take away from watching this movie is that Russell Crowe has always been a good actor, even before he was known widely. This movie came out the same year as "The Quick and the Dead" where he played a reformed gunslinger forced into a gunfight tournament.Russell Crowe is FBI Agent Zack Grant and the movie begins with the botched assignment to have an new agent drop a listening device into a suspect's apartment, but things go terribly wrong. So Zack needs to redeem himself by finding the person responsible.Zack finds that the agent had made several calls to Etsushi Toyokawa as Yuji Kobayashi and assumes he was the bad guy responsible, so he sets out to arrest him and bring him back. Very shaky assumption.On the flight back to L.A. a critical role is filled by Helen Slater (of early "Supergirl" fame) as Mary, a rookie flight attendant who tries hard to get along with Zack but doesn't quite get there.There could be a summary of the story but I am going to skip that. This movie is barely as good as its IMDb rating of "5". The dialog is very poor most of the time, and the characters are directed to do some very stupid things, often, to advance the plot. Just one example, Zack at one point has chased down Yuji in the desert after an escape, and as Zack begins to mumble something steps in front of Yuji in perfect position for Yuji to overpower him, which he does. No FBI agent in his right mind would have done that. There actually is a second positive thing to take away from watching this movie. I have no doubt the script writer and the director tried their best to make this a fine movie, so it just serves to illustrate how difficult the job is. When we see a fine movie with an interesting script and superb acting we tend to take it for granted, but few movie-makers have that skill.

If you`re a fan of Toyokawa Etsushi, as I am, then fast forward over all the scenes that he isn`t in.(And enjoy the closeup of his gorgeous hands when he`s looking for a weapon in the airplane toilet.) Even most of the scenes that he *is* in are stupid. Russell Crowe fans will probably say the same thing about their man.

'No Way Back' reminded me of were the original 'Die Hard' and 'Speed'. A cop who's job gets increasingly personal. A put-upon hero who gets his mettle tested to the limit and loved ones are in harms way. A white-knuckle ride all the way with all kinds of action, twists and turns in the plot. Before I saw it I asked around and read fan reviews. The predominating message was that you could skip it because a particular character is annoying and whiny. I wouldn't allow that to stop you - especially if you are a Crowe fan. In addition to being an action film, it's got a sense of humor and a sense of humanity. There are some wonderful performances by two Japanese actors in the film, and one shocking one by anyone who's seen 'Beverly Hills 90210'.