Maybe Polanski needed to show the Americans that he was against the "bad guys". The French police is of course incompetent, the French girl dresses as a prostitute, eventually the American saves the day.
No, Polanski just wanted the worlds biggest star at that point in his movie. The centrifuge is a MacGuffin, it's just a Hitchockian excuse for suspense and intrigue, as in North By Northwest. I got the impression Ford wasn't trying to "save the day", he was just trying to get his wife back. He seemed pretty disgusted with cops, the U.S. government, and the baddies at the end of the film. I don't think the police were shown as any more or less incompetent than the police in any other film of this type. The cops usually don't "get it", if for no other reason that it gives the hero a reason to go off on his own and be detective. The U.S. government people were clearly depicted as buffoons, just as much if not more so than the French cops.
Of Seigner's outifts I say she was more "punk" than "slut". Can't judge a book by it's cover, though actually, she was worse than a prostitute since she was involved with drug dealing. That's doing an a disservice to prostitutes to compare them.
As far as stereotypes, well, it was either going to have Russian stereotypes or it was going to have Arab stereotypes, being an 80's film. Can you honestly the Soviet Union was good, or say that the idea of fundamentalist Iran, terrorists, or Iraq while under Saddam, acquiring a nuclear bomb was a comforting thought?
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