Douglas Chapman

Below the surface of action, the emotions . . . of individual players motivate their actions--not just script directions. Even Tom Cruise's Ethan Hunt is, in addition to his mandate to save the free world, defined and driven by care for his wife, played by Julia Meade and Ilsa, who not only insists in accompanying Hunt but helps and defends him in several scenes.

The watcher can choose whatever meaning life has from this story. This film is full of wonder. I saw it when I was young (23), and now again at eighty-one years old. Kier Dullea's sensitivity is a reflection of every human fear; Janet Margolin is a reminder in the flesh of how vulnerable women are--and how immortally beautiful as a flower that lives but a single day. Everyone in the movie--the other patients, the psychiatrist and his aid, the mother and father with their son at the train station--is so recognizable in his or her role, extensions of the best we would hope to be, and examples of the worst we too often are. It's a good movie. For me, it is a great movie.