- Awesome Music: Hans Zimmer, natch.
- Complete Monster: Although the Big Bad, Dušan Gavrić, is an Anti-Villain motivated by the deaths of his wife and daughter, the same cannot be said for his courier, Renegade Russian general Aleksandr Kodoroff, who is shipping Gavric a load of warheads for his planned assault on the UN headquarters and is Only in It for the Money. Kodoroff has his men massacre all the soldiers on a passenger train and steal nine of the nukes being shipped out, leaving one to go off after arranging the shipment train to crash head-on into a passenger train. The resulting nuclear blast wipes out 1,500 people and leaves fallout affecting the entire country. Kodoroff cold-bloodedly murders one of his own men after the man expresses horror over this, and later slaughters the entire force of a Russian checkpoint en route to Gavrić. Kodoroff's only concern through all this is lining his own pockets, and he even expresses disgust at a line of refugees simply for being poor.
- Harsher in Hindsight: The latter half of the film deals with a terrorist attack on New York.
- A White House official complains how much he misses the Cold War. Considering how relations between the US and Russia have deteriorated visibly in the 2010's he spoke too soon.
- Narm: The face Gavric makes when his family died in the flashback ruins the emotional impact of said scene.
- Kodorof's very accented English.
- So Okay, It's Average: Both critics and audience shared the same opinion regarding the film. They still think it's better than Clooney's other film in 1997.
