Ruby Cairo

Not sure why this movie rates so bad with my fellow IMDB members.

I just watched it and found it to be a pleasant diversion. It has interesting locations and the gorgeous Andie McDowell to brighten up the scenery. True, the mystery is not that much, and the ending leaves somewhat to be desired, but this movie is not as terrible as its IMDB rating suggests. The baseball card keys are somewhat unique and I'm an old Pittsburgh Pirate fan--which made it a little more interesting to me. Anyway, give this movie a chance when you have time. 6/10

Run of the mill thriller which has a woman searching high and low for a missing hubby thought to have been killed in a plane crash. A few old baseball cards provided clues to a mysterious humanitarian aid group and finally leads her to a country in Africa where all questions were answered.

Andie MacDowell is not a strong enough actress to carry this on her back as she did. She was basically a sleuth but the persona she conveyed made it seem as if her sleuthing powers just appeared by magic--amazing what script writers can do! It is totally improbable that she could have walked around some of the worst districts of Cairo looking like she did and remain unmolested. Ditto the locations in Mexico. The plot was weak and there were a lot of loose threads. The most interesting part of the movie was the scene shot in a Coptic church in Cairo and, of course, Hollywood had to pull its punches. For while Dr. Lamb credits them with saving his life, it is not clear that he has actually converted. John Faro, the lynch pin for the movie's plot and Bessie's husband, was a weak character, weakly portrayed by Mortensen. I agree with some of the other reviewers that the movie started out to be interesting but began to fall apart about 1/3 of the way into the picture. The ending was very weak--a characteristic of American movies for several decades now and one of my pet peeves.

This movie has a pretty decent first half hour or so as Andie McDowell learns her pilot husband has been killed in Mexico and she needs to go there to identify the body. She then discovers that he had stashes of cash hidden at various banks around the world, and because of how well she knew him is able to transcribe his very elaborate decoding system (each bank falls under a different alias, and the way McDowell figures out which alias goes with which bank in which country actually got me pretty good while watching it) Unfortunately the movie pretty much falls apart once she gets to the last bank and is told that that account was closed out by the account holder himself. (which of course is impossible since she just identified his body earlier in the movie) No spoilers here, but McDowell then spends the rest of the movie trying to track down how that could be, eventually hooking up with Liam Neeson along the way. Neeson by the way has almost nothing to do in this movie...given his above the title billing, you'd think he'd have more to do, but no, his entire role is to look adoringly at McDowell, they have a nice little montage of walking around together and they climb a hill at one point, but Neeson is literally given nothing to do with the actual plot of the movie that we're watching. I'm not saying that that's a bad thing, but you know he's known these days as a man of action, so to see him standing idly by while McDowell does all the sleuthing is kind of funny to me. The last half hour is a real let down btw. Again after that first half hour, I was thinking we're in for a semi decent suspense film (and we're getting a decent-ish travelogue here as well as McDowell is hopscotching from one country to another) but that last half hour loses so much steam that the ending came as a real disappointment to me.

I just can't seem to tell the difference between Ruby Cairo, As Good As Dead, The End of Violence, and Harrison's Flowers, since they all star Andie MacDowell searching for her lost husband! If you've never seen any of them and have no clue where to start, just pick your favorite of the husbands and rent that one. Do you like Cary Elwes? Rent As Good As Dead. Like Bill Pullman? Try The End of Violence. Were you always a sucker for David Strathairn? Check out Harrison's Flowers. And if Viggo Mortensen floats your boat more than the others, watch Ruby Cairo.

In this one, Viggo dies in a plane crash, so Andie doesn't exactly chase after him. She does chase after his financial records, which are left in a total mess. She soon learns he didn't walk the straight-and-narrow, and as one clue leads her to another to another, she's sent on a trip around the world to find out more about what he left behind. Once in Egypt, hence the title, Andie meets Liam Neeson, the head of a philanthropic organization. Fans of Viggo, don't despair: there are quite a few flashbacks to satisfy your eye candy. And if you love Andie, this sexy thriller is a fun one! If you liked it, check out Harrison's Flowers next. It's a touch more violent, but it's still good.