John Travolta is Jack, a sound-effects man who happens to record the noise of a car speeding across a bridge, a shot, a blowout, and the crash of the car to the water below. The driver—the governor who is the most popular candidate for the Presidency—is dead, but Jack is able to rescue the governor’s passenger, a cuddly blonde (Nancy Allen). On paper this movie, written and directed by Brian De Palma, might seem to be just a political thriller, but it has a rapt intensity that makes it unlike any other political thriller. Playing an adult (his first), and an intelligent one, Travolta has a vibrating physical sensitivity like that of the very young Brando, and Nancy Allen, who gives her role a flirty iridescence, is equally vivid.