Juegos del destino

Has there ever been a more dour, dreary and depressing movie romance than "Random Hearts," a film that drones on for 131 grueling minutes and traps two wonderful actors, Harrison Ford and Kristin Scott Thomas, in its diabolical clutches?

Ford is a police sergeant working in internal affairs and Thomas is a New Hampshire congresswoman whose paths cross when their spouses, who are having a secret affair with each other, die in a plane crash. Drawn together by both circumstance and grief, the two begin a tentative love affair despite the many complications it sets up.

The actors do their best given the stark limitations of portraying two people overcome with despair, but the audience is nevertheless subjected to more than two hours of unrelieved gloominess. In a sense, it is a bit of a relief to see a romantic film that is not all lightheartedness and carefree silliness, but a subject as profound as the study of grief and loss on the human psyche demands a less conventional, more imaginative and serious a format than this film provides. (The brilliant film, "Fearless," from 1993 is a startling case in point). The actions of the characters often ring false as when, for instance, the two grieving spouses, sitting in a car, suddenly begin grappling in a wild sexual frenzy, a moment that elicits giggles from the audience because it is so lacking in motivation and preparation. Moreover, the film pads out its narrative by constantly cutting away to an irrelevant and wholly underdeveloped subplot involving Ford's pursuit of a murderous cop - a sideshow that results in a completely ludicrous shooting scene that undercuts the seriousness of the film's purpose.

"Random Hearts" is an obvious and, perhaps, even admirable attempt to bring a more mature, adult-oriented love story to the screen. It's a shame, then, that all involved seem to have confused dreariness with profundity and gloominess with depth.

Random Hearts: Losing a significant other is a subject most people would rather not think about. Now, try to imagine this agony exacerbated by the knowledge that your spouse was headed for an illicit rendezvous when they died: the combination of grief and betrayal is simply too overwhelming to comprehend. This is what confronts Dutch Van Den Broeck (Harrison Ford) a hard-nosed cop with DC Internal Affairs and Kay Chandler (Kristin Scott Thomas) a US Congresswoman, when their cheating spouses are killed in a plane crash.

With heavy hitters Ford and Thomas on the Marquee, and the subject matter in question, I expected a well crafted, intriguing movie, or at the very least, an entertaining one. If only it were so. Hearts suffers from a flat, poorly written script, with corny formulaic dialogue - several "touching" moments left the audience in hysterics - leaving the actors with little too work with. The problems don't end there.

From its inception this movie was obviously intended as a romantic drama. I can only assume that the subplot involving an investigation of a duo of dirty cops was added as an afterthought to secure the ever-important 18-35 male demographic. The result is a quixotic mess: every time the movie begins to flow and find its legs, it veers off on a tangent, until you longer care what happens.

When the credits finally started rolling after 133 minutes I was positively exhausted. Unless you've seen all the movies that are currently out or are desperate for a pseudo date flick, give this a miss.

**SPOILERS** Overlong and somewhat confusing drama involving an airplane crash, Southern Airline flight from D.C to Miami, where two of the crash victims were cheating on their spouses.

It's not much later that one of those being cheated on Washington D.C internal affair police Sgt. Dutch Van Den Broeck, Harrison Ford, got wind from her job that his old lady Peyton, Susanna Thompson, was on a flight to Miami to do a fashion shoot for her employer Sacks 5th Av of Washington D.C. Desperately trying to find out if Peyton was on the doomed flight Ducth not only finds out that she was, through a morgue photo at the crash site, but she was using an assumed name! Peyton was using the name of the wife of the person that booked the flight Cullen Chandler, Peter Coyote. Things get even more strange when it's discovered that the late Mr. Chandler's wife, who he's been cheating on, is non other then New Hampshire congresswoman Kay Chandler, Kristin Scott Thomas, who's now in a life and death campaign for reelection!

The movie brings the two, Dutch & Kay, together in finding if in fact it's true that they were being cheated on by their marriage partners. And in the process they end up falling in love with each other! If it was just that the film "Random Hearts" would have made for a pretty good adult love story. Instead by putting into the film murder drug dealing both police corruption and political chicanery the movie at times was almost impossible to follow!

Dutch who should have taken a leave of absent from the D.C Police Department in order for him to overcome his grief goes the exact opposite direction. Instead he goes full blast in busting fellow D.C cop George Beauford, Dennis Haysbert, for drug dealing by him getting, which is very unprofessional on Dutch's part, very personal about it. This not only leads to Dutch's top informant to get murdered but Dutch almost ending up murdered himself! Or at the least losing his job or being put behind bars for taking the law into his own hands! All of this together with Dutch trying to find out if his wife Peyton was untrue to him seemed too much for the poor guy to handle. As for Kay she had far more pressing problems in the fact if her dead husband's infidelity became public it could very well screw her out of a second term in the US Congress!

***SPOILERS*** With the film being much too long, 133 minutes, as well as complicated and confusing you completely lose interest in it at about the one hour mark! It takes a while to realize what exactly Dutch & Kay are so desperately looking for, their cheating partners secret love nest, and when they, independent of each other, finally find it what was the big shocking surprise anyway! It only proved to Dutch & Kay, what we in the audience knew all along, what should have been obvious to them right from the very beginning of the movie!

Random Hearts snuck up on me. Criticized for the implausibility of a) the premise and b) the pairing of an IA cop and a Congresswoman, as well as for its slowness, the film felt just fine to me , and even ended up being surprisingly absorbing. I found my interest engaged as the film cut back and forth between Ford's and Thomas's lives as they first found out about, and dealt in very different ways in very different environments with, their spouses' deaths and the subsequent revelation that they were involved with other people. It could happen; two people's philandering spouses could be on the same plane, the plane could go down, the survivors could be brought together by the aftermath. So what if it's improbable? Improbable is not the same as far-fetched. So..what if it did happen? Why not speculate?

Ford's and Thomas's performances are believable and nuanced. Instead of finding their coupling implausible (opposite sides of the tracks--give me a break) I felt it driven by a grief and betrayal neither party knew how to deal with. The script does not bring them together too soon or too easily, and the end of the film does not resolve their relationship conventionally, either. Where I find it unsatisfying is when the dialogue brings up interesting wrinkles in or insights into the ramifications of the situation, personal and professional, but never seems to pursue any of them very far. And if you make the mistake of thinking about it too hard, Harrison Ford does seem about 10 years too old for the part.

For five and a half bucks at Wal-Mart, with full length director commentary and behind-the-scenes featurette, the DVD is well worth owning. I don't think I would pay $20 for it on a bet, but my wife might. OK, ten...

The opening scenes grab you and push you back into your seat. The two stars of the film have just lost their spouses in an air crash. They must identify the bodies. Harrison Ford discovers his wife was sitting next to a man in first class so he calls upon the wife of this man. He suspects that they might have been having an affair. Harrison Ford is such a good actor; he leads you into the film and won't let you go. This is a bit unfortunate because the story slowly deteriorates. No viewer can miss what is going to happen next but this review will not tell you just in case someone new to American cinema fears "a spoiler." The acting is so good that the film can hold your interest, but it does not seem to live up to its riveting beginning.