Just forget John McLane and replace the Nakatomi Plaza by the Eiffel Tower and you'll have some kind of a John McTiernan's masterpiece, but of course at a lesser scale. It is rather light minded story from an Alistair Mc Lean's novel, also in the line of Walter Wager or Colin Forbes, masters of adventure, crime and spy thrillers from the sixties and seventies, involving masterminded plots of huge hostage plots, stories that took place during a decade of the international terrorism. A period when you fond many books, novels speaking of those topics; only few of them were brought to the big screen, unfortunately. In this one, the "criminals" are the main characters and the audience can't prevent to feel empathy for them, to wish them to get away with it, unlike DIE HARD for instance, where the hero, white knight was the true lead. Good feature indeed for such a second rate big budget film. maybe a greater director would have been useful though. Plus, Keir Dullea - Smith - in the mastermind evil leader looks like Bill Sadler in DIE HARD 2 - Colonel Stuart - one of the most terrific and horrible bad guy ever shown on screen. He has nearly the same face, same look, same eyes. Frightening cold iced eyes.
