Ford makes lemon

"Random Hearts"
Overall Rating: *


What's to like about a romantic drama that's as romantic and dramatic as a funeral? In this case, practically nothing.

Dutch Van Den Broeck (Harrison Ford) is an internal affairs officer with the Washington D.C. police, and Kay Chandler (Kristin Scott Thomas) is a congresswoman from New Hampshire. Neither one of them knows that his/her spouse is having an affair with the other's spouse, until the unfaithful parties are killed in a plane crash in route to a romantic rendezvous. In the aftermath, Dutch's attempts to piece together what happened bring him and Kay together.

This movie has one novelty: Harrison Ford delivers a bad performance. I know he can play the desperate, grief-stricken husband seeking the truth--he did that in "The Fugitive" and "Frantic." I know he can handle romantic parts--I enjoyed "Six Days, Seven Nights" largely because of the chemistry between him and Anne Heche. Unfortunately, in "Random Hearts," he comes across more like a psychotic stalker than anything else. Much of the blame goes to the writers, for Dutch is in no way a charming character, and Dutch's explanation for his behavior is too little, too late to make up for the character's insanely obsessive nature throughout the movie. Both factors significantly undermine Ford's performance. Nonetheless, Ford is singularly unappealing here.

This is not to say that the other actors do any better. Mostly, as happened with Ford, they are hindered by their characters' odious natures. Kristin Scott Thomas, for instance, makes Chandler come across as the self-centered, out-of-touch, standing-for-nothing, career politician that everybody hates. You know something is wrong when a character's husband cheats on her then dies, and you still want her to lose the election. Mostly, the supporting cast members blend into each other. Perhaps the one exception is Bonnie Hunt, who plays one of Chandler's sycophants who also had a fling with Chandler's husband; Hunt stands out by making her character suitably sleazy and affected.

Aside from disagreeable characters, we have an illogical plot badly presented. "Random Hearts" is excruciatingly slow paced; though less than two and a quarter hours, the combined length of "Gone with the Wind," "Lawrence of Arabia," and "Malcolm X" would seem shorter. If not the cause of the slow pace, the oppressive emotional tone certainly exacerbates the problem: the central characters are grief stricken, the entire plot revolves around their losses, and there's never a light moment. Key plot elements often make no sense--the most notable being when Kay suddenly stops hating Dutch and starts loving him. Another example is how Kay, who is so concerned about appearances, goes to Dutch's cabin in the woods without a second thought. A third example is when Dutch goes out of his way to beat up a suspect because the suspect left a threatening message on his answering machine (never mind that the tape would be useful as evidence and Dutch's response almost blows the case for no reason). The incident with the suspect is part of one of the two subplots--the other being the disillusionment of Kay's daughter Jessica regarding her father. Both subplots come out of nowhere, go nowhere, and interrupt the flow of the thin, main plot for no real benefit. The frequent transitions to the subplots and between Dutch and Kay's lives gives the film an incredibly incoherent feeling. The combined effect of the sudden jumps, slow pace, and moody feel makes every scene painfully awkward. The final coup de grace: the film lacks any meaningful conclusion--not that I cared at this point, but I stayed for the credits, and I still don't know whether Dutch and Kay get together.

If you're thinking of taking the kids to this movie (perhaps as punishment for some severe offense, such as totaling the car while drunk), you can rest assured that, while there is copious strong language and pervasive innuendo, the violence, sexual content, and nudity are all more muted than you'd expect in an R-rated movie. I'm at a loss for how the movie wound up with that severe rating, but then I'm at a loss as to how it got made and released.

"Random Hearts" tries desperately to be depressing; unless you turn your brain off, you'll be bored instead. My advice: fly away from this disaster.


Title: "Random Hearts"
Release date: October 8, 1999

MPAA rating: R
Overall rating: *

Aprox. run time: 132 min.
Director: Sydney Pollack
Writers: Darryl Ponicsan, Kurt Luedtke, Warren Adler (novel)
Stars: Harrison Ford, Kristin Scott Thomas

Original URL: http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/Mansion/7045/Random.htm
Added to blog site: 8/4/09