Just looking at the pieces, Tom Hanks, Julia Roberts, Phillip Seymour Hoffman, and an Aaron Sorkin script, it’s hard to imagine this going wrong, and it doesn’t, but when you see what Hoffman is able to do with his role it makes you wonder what kind of movie might have resulted with other actors in top two spots.
Hanks and Roberts aren’t bad by any stretch. But Roberts especially is one of those actors who specializes in playing Julia Roberts. She can be Julia Roberts the hooker, or Julia Roberts the crime fighter, but she’s always Julia Roberts. Same thing with Brad Pitt or Tom Cruise. They do great work, but they’re the kind of people who shine through their characters, not disappear into them. Hoffman, on the other hand is a person who creates something new and different every time he’s on screen and here his CIA agent steals every scene he shows up in. It makes you wonder what might have been if someone with that sort of chameleon quality, say a Meryl Streep, had been putting on the big Texas Hair wigs instead of Julia.
That said, it’s a great film from a fantastic, punchy, speedy script. It doesn’t do anything groundbreaking, it just does everything well. By the time you start to wonder if there’s really enough here to keep the story going, it’s over and gone. By the time you get to your car, you kind of miss it.
