Jerry Fletcher (Mel Gibson) is a
New York City cab driver who seems to have absorbed every bit of crackpot
information passed along as "suppressed news" that's surfaced on talk radio
or the Internet in the past 20 years. Anti-United Nations militia men who
are actually U.N. operatives? NASA scientists engineering earthquakes?
Oliver Stone's secret life as a government agent discrediting conspiracy
theorists? Jerry's heard 'em all and believes most of them, and even
publishes his own journal of forbidden information, with a subscription list
that now totals five people. In short, Jerry seems like just another New
York City lunatic, and while he spends a fair amount of his spare time
following Alice Sutton (Julia Roberts), a government attorney, Alice regards
him as harmless; he once intervened while she was being mugged, and he's
been acting like her benign if whacked-out protector ever since. However,
one day Jerry is kidnapped and worked over by CIA operatives; he is
convinced that one of the theories he uncovered must be for real — but he
has no idea which one. He tries to get Alice to help him, and before long
both are drawn into a dangerous web that leads to a startling revelation of
just how Jerry got this way. Mel Gibson gives a fine comic performance, and
those with a taste for alternative media will have fun dissecting which of
the theories Jerry spouts are "real" (or at least appeared before this film
was made) and which were the invention of the screenwriters.| Mel Gibson | Jerry Fletcher |
| Julia Roberts | Alice Sutton |
| Patrick Stewart | Dr. Jonas |
| Cylk Cozart | Agent Lowry |
| Stephen Kahan | |
| Terry Alexander |
Genre/Type - Thriller, Action, Paranoid Thriller, Action Thriller, Chase Movie
Produced by - Silver Pictures / Warner Brothers
Running time - 135 min.
The Long Journey Home (1987, Rod Holcomb)
Bird on a Wire (1990, John Badham)
Stuart Bliss (1998, Neil Grieve)
Final (2001)
Birthday Girl (2001, Jez Butterworth)
Enemy of the State (1998, Tony Scott)
Mercury Rising (1998, Harold Becker)
Absolute Power (1997, Clint Eastwood)