Film Review: Random Hearts (1999)

In 1980s it was hard to imagine that Sydney Pollack, “Oscar”-winning producer and director with consistent series of critically acclaimed box office hits, would one day deliver massive box office flop. It was even less conceivable for this thing to happen to the film with Harrison Ford, 1980s undisputed Hollywood superstar, in the main role. 1990S were, however, quite different decade and both Pollack and Ford learned it the hard way with 1999 drama Random Hearts.

The plot, based on the novel by William Adler, deals with two very different people who are put together by tragedy that would wreck their previously perfect lives. Sergeant William “Dutch” Van Den Broek (played by Harrison Ford) is Internal Affairs investigator within Washington, D.C. Police Department who is married to successful fashion magazine editor Peyton (played by Susanna Thompson). Kay Chandler (played by Kristin Scott Thomas) is Republican congresswoman from New Hampshire whose husband Cullen (played by Peter Coyote) is an attorney and with whom she has 15-year old daughter Jessica (played by Kate Mara). One day passenger plane crashes and Peyton and Cullen are among the victims. Both of them weren’t supposed to travel yet they boarded the plane claiming to be husband and wife. Even experienced investigator like Dutch needs time to put two and two together but, once when he is convinced that his wife had extramarital affair, decides to confront other man’s widow. Kay is facing re-election campaign and doesn’t need complications in the form of scandal, but she nevertheless decides to help Dutch settle the matter. She soon begins to get attracted to Dutch and he gets attracted to her.

Adler’s novel originally attracted Hollywood producers but the script spent decade and half in development hell before actually being produced. All those who watch Random Hearts will soon know why. Everything which is interesting in the film happens at the very beginning and seemingly intriguing opening premise is later wasted on series of annoying melodramatic cliches. Pollack doesn’t help with the tendency to move plot extremely slowly and Random Hearts has running time of more than two hours, which is unbearable for this sort of film. Since it is quite obvious how and why the plot would develop, Kurt Luedtke tries to spice things up with crime subplot involving police corruption. This only brings another set of annoying cliches and makes thing even longer. Even some of the actors don’t seem to be too interested in the role, especially Ford whose performance is quite disappointing. English actress Kristin Scott Thomas tries very hard in her role and handles American accent, but all her valiant effort isn’t enough to rescue this film. For almost any part of audience spending precious time watching such surprisingly low levels of quality on the screen is simply not worth the effort.

RATING: 2/10 (-)

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