In reply to Blue Straggler:
thought it was good. the exchanges between phillip seymour hoffman and tom hanks were snappy and at times very funny (eg over the bottle of talisker).
i thought that julia roberts character was probably a watered down version of reality.
not a great film, but an entertaining one. interesting to shed light on such a public stage on the fairly direct lineage between covert CIA operations and the Taliban, Al Quaeda and the war that the UK and USA are fighting there now.
it couldve been done as a fairly serious political drama along the lines of syriana or something, rather than a comedy of personalities, which is largely what it is. given the importance of the subject maybe it should have been that. to that extent it was lightweight.
