As a card-carrying member of a half-dozen or more environmental groups, I was attracted to `Greenmail's' advertised plot about the mismatched union of an activist and an ATF agent to stop an environmentalist gone over the edge into a spree of fatal bombings.
Alas, the environmental angle is nothing more than an excuse for a very standard genre thriller where the villain blows up a lot of people. Even the potentially interesting Seattle setting (actually, the ever-popular Vancouver, save for a few establishing shots) is not utilized to any particular advantage.
The competent cast does what it can with a basically uninteresting script and surprisingly languid direction. What suspense there is consists of far too many scenes of people hesitantly snipping wires on bombs which either blow up or do not with fair predictability.
Too bad. There was the opportunity for some genuine ideological conflict between the two main protagonists and a more thoughtful motivation for the cardboard villain. The one very minor plot twist is reduced to a simple throwaway line because we really don't know much about why the characters do what they do to their friends or to others.
Alas, the environmental angle is nothing more than an excuse for a very standard genre thriller where the villain blows up a lot of people. Even the potentially interesting Seattle setting (actually, the ever-popular Vancouver, save for a few establishing shots) is not utilized to any particular advantage.
The competent cast does what it can with a basically uninteresting script and surprisingly languid direction. What suspense there is consists of far too many scenes of people hesitantly snipping wires on bombs which either blow up or do not with fair predictability.
Too bad. There was the opportunity for some genuine ideological conflict between the two main protagonists and a more thoughtful motivation for the cardboard villain. The one very minor plot twist is reduced to a simple throwaway line because we really don't know much about why the characters do what they do to their friends or to others.