Please excuse the observation of a novice to the list and a political scientist, but it seems to be very difficult in an action type of film to get sophisticated messages across. For example, it was my impression when I saw "Sneakers," some time ago that an anarchistic or nihilistic orientation motivated the character played by Ben Kinsley. In my mind, socialism involves the collective ownership of the means of production, either by the workers, the state, or some other collective. Perhaps I missed the identification of a collective to which Kinsley wished to turn over the running of the economic system. But it seemed to me that, like Russian nihilists of the last century, Kinsley simply wanted to kick the system in, on the assumption that whatever evolved afterwards would have to be better than the present system. The problem of transmitting sophisticated messages seems to be rampant in popular action films. For example, it wasn't until the second viewing of "Terminator II: Judgement Day," that I caught the critical sentence about what started "Judgement Day," the nuclear war--humans attempting to turn off a computer system that had become self-aware, a modernized version of the theme underlying "Colossus: The Forbin Project." Rhetorically, I wonder how many viewers picked up that explanation? ** Should this be a SPOILER WARNING???? ** ** Question posed by a newcomer ** Sometimes, the movie maker, in order to bring some sort of logical explanation for a film must resort to an awkward device, such as Stephanie Zimbalist's 2-minute crying monologue in "The Babysitter" (1980) after she had been disarmed by William Shattner. Note: if anybody is interested, this made-for-TV movie will be televised on TBS, this Friday at 7:30 p.m. PST.