Python Hyena Random Hearts (1999): Dir: Sydney Pollack / Cast: Harrison Ford, Kristen Scott Thomas, Charles S. Dutton, Bonnie Hunt, Dennis Haysbert: Advertised as a disaster film, romance, suspense, and drama. It fails on all accounts. It regards the reality of people coming together through circumstances beyond their control. Harrison Ford stars as a cop whose wife died in a plane crash. Kristen Scott Thomas plays a congresswoman whose husband died in the same crash. Could they have been having an affair? Are trees green in summer? It will surprise no one when they become romantically linked. Even their first sexual encounter in a car seems horribly cliché. Director Sidney Pollack does his best but the production looks drab. He previously directed Ford in Sabrina but this hardly matches his work in films such as Absence of Malice and Tootsie. Apparently Ford being a major box office draw isn't working for Pollack. Perhaps he should cast him in an action film, since he generally draws in those. Ford and Thomas cannot save this dreary film and seem to be coasting on star power only. Charles S. Dutton and Bonnie Hunt appear in flat supporting roles. Part of the problem is that the marketing doesn't know what the film is. The romance is bland at best and the thriller elements are a blink and miss variety. Cheap film with a cheap payoff only interested in a sigh from the audience. Many will sigh from impatience. Score: 2 / 10

Robert J. Maxwell In "The Big Heat," detective Glenn Ford's loving wife is blown up by the heavies and he becomes obsessed with nailing the killers. All his colleagues and friends are sympathetic but as Ford pushes beyond the limits of the envelope, they withdraw their support. There's no controlling Ford's morbid determination.In this movie, Harrison Ford discovers that his wife was killed in an airplane crash, seated next to the married man she was having an affair with, both on their way to a secret holiday in Miami. Harrison Ford is in thrall to a grim determination to find out all he can about the affair -- the hotel room they used in Miami, the rendezvous point in Washington, the night clubs they went to, the gifts they gave each other. It makes little sense because we haven't seen Ford and his wife happy together. If Glenn Ford was driven half crazy by grief, enough to lose his job, Harrison Ford lacks that compelling motive, although he too loses his job.Along the way he discovers Kristen Scott Thomas, the betrayed wife of the man who was cuckolding him. She's in Congress and can't afford the publicity of having the affair made public. They're at odds with each other. He wants to know all the details while she's stoic and wants to put the whole ordeal behind her. Of course Ford and Thomas have an affair.Is there anything beneath this sappy love story besides the romantic musical score? It has holes -- major and minor -- in the plot. Minor: Thomas' daughter, Jessica, is in Andover, "a prep school," described as forty miles from Washington, although Phillips Andover Academy is in Massachusetts, 25 miles north of Boston.Major: While Ford and Thomas hardly know one another, and she's been icy towards him, they fall into a desperate and strenuous clinch in a car and he apparently brings her off in ten seconds.Well, that's rather "intermediate" than "major", because it adumbrates the affair that begins soon after. But here's another major flaw: The last politician to be actually damaged by a divorce or revelation of a wandering spouse was Nelson Rockefeller in 1964. Granted that the press has turned far more tabloid in its sensibilities since then, the fact that one's father has been shacking up on weekends isn't really enough to make sophisticated, sixteen-year-old Jessica drop a plate on the floor in shock. Now if he'd been a serial killer -- There is a sub-theme that has Ford, in Internal Affairs, trying to nail an errant cop. It belongs in an action movie. It seems to have little to do with the developing romance.The performances are okay. Harrison Ford looks glum throughout, wears a hangdog expression, and when he parts for the last time with Thomas he tries to smile openly for the first time and one hears the creak of long-unused facial muscles. Thomas, on the other hand, is more animated. She's quite pretty, her aquiline schnozz notwithstanding. She's appealing -- pale, fragile, wide-eyed -- and from some angles resembles Marlene Dietrich except for von Sternberg's lighting and that thin but prominent nose.But it's mostly a confusing mess. I had no idea where the movie was headed. That's okay because I sometimes get derailed. What was troubling was that I couldn't be at all sure that the writers knew what they were about either.

writers_reign Okay, Billy Wilder got their first with Avanti in which Jack Lemmon and Juliette Mills journey to Ischia to claim the respective bodies of his father and her mother who have been killed in a road accident, only to discover that they have been meeting on the island for years clandestinely. They start out as antagonists and end up in the sack, natch. Here Sydney Pollack puts a little spin on it inasmuch as Ford and Scott Thomas are not on a vacation island thousands of miles from home when - in this case - their spouses rather than parents - fail to survive a plane crash. Pollack also allows us to see both Ford and Scott Thomas at work whereas Lemmon on Mills had left their day jobs behind. Still there are enough similarities for plagiarism to rear its ugly head, so what else is knew. This eluded me on release and I found a Russian version in a Thrift Shop, recognized Scott Thomas on the box, know she always delivers so took it home. I was pleasantly surprised, especially after reading the first few pans here on IMDb. Scott Thomas was good as ever and a tad warmer than she often plays and works well with Ford who probably was, as someone remarked, a touch old for the role. Overall I enjoyed it and may well give it another whirl in a year or so.

TOMASBBloodhound With a story like this, maybe it couldn't have been paced well anyway. But Random Hearts is like a glossy, stillborn mess that just sort of sits there and waits for you to decide when to turn the channel. Normally the late Sydney Pollack brought a lot more to his films, but here he must have thought star power could be enough. The story is implausible at best, and maybe just a step ahead of ludicrous. Tough Internal Affairs cop and female congressman from New Hampshire lose their spouses in a plane crash. The congresswoman wants to forget the whole thing and move on, but the inquisitive nature of the cop keeps him searching for answers. Finally, after the viewer has long since lost interest in the movie, the two begin an affair as hard to believe as Ted Danson and Whoopie Goldberg. There is WAY too much time dedicated to a subplot involving crooked cops, and this whole angle should have been written out. The whole thing plays out very, very slowly.The acting is good enough, and it is the film's only saving grace. Ford is dour and reserved as the grizzled cop. Thomas is believable and even likable as the politician whose biggest care seems to be if she should run for office again or not. She seems at peace instantly when she learns of her husband's death. The thought of these two having an affair together just isn't plausible, though. No way. It would be easier to take if the film didn't waste so much time with its subplots and parsed dialog. Pollack tries to use similar music to what he used in The Firm to liven things up, but this only makes us recall how much better that film was. And it was far from great. But that is the subject of another review perhaps some day.Was there a good way to tell such a contrived story? Not sure, but this film is a failure. In many ways, it began the downfall of Harrison Ford who has seen his career sag in recent years. Even though it was no classic, the last Indiana Jones film was the best work he's done in years. Random Hearts is essentially a waste of a good cast, director, and over two hours of your time. 4 of 10 stars.The Hound.