Montessi (Kim Coates) and his men have taken over a water filtration plant, are holding hostages, and keep threatening to poison the water supply. Rogue cop David Chase (Jeff Fahey) and Melissa Wilkins (Carrie-Anne Moss) sneak around the plant and try to stop the terrorists. David Chase is set up to be a John McClane type but instead, he only kills one terrorists and then lets everyone else do most of the work. Of course, the whole water filtration hostage situation is just a distraction so Mr. Turner (Gary Busey) can steal a bunch of bonds. Busey sits behind a computer for most of the movie, lending his name but not much else.
A good cast is wasted in what is definitely one of the worst of the many Die Hard rip-offs to come out in the 90s. There’s not enough action, with Jeff Fahey as a passive hero and even the great Kim Coates reduced to standing around and doing a lot of yelling for most of his time on screen. Gary Busey is the big star here but it’s obvious that he was only on the set for a few hours and his plan for stealing the bonds never makes sense. Whenever anyone questions his plans, he says that it involves computers. In the 90s, I guess that was enough.
Watching this last night, I realized that I had seen it on Cinemax back in the day. It didn’t make much sense back then either.
Detective David Chase (Jeff Fahey) should not be mistaken for the creator of The Sopranos. Instead, he is an eccentric and tough Chicago policeman, the type of cop who appears to have seen Mel Gibson in Lethal Weapon one too many times. His superiors send Detective Chase and his partner to keep an eye on a strike occurring outside of a water purification plant. Chase, however, is less interested in the strike and more interested in hitting on Melissa (Carrie-Ann Moss), who works at the plant.
Through the Shattered Lens 