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Well the film that split up Dennis Quaid and Meg Ryan finally makes it to the theater. Proof of Life stars Ryan alongside Mr. Russell Crowe (from Gladiator) as the wife of a certain Peter Bowman (David Morse, The Green Mile) who is in charge of building a dam in South America. Shortly into the film Peter is kidnapped by a group of anti-government guerrillas looking for ransom money while the company Peter works for disintegrates. Once Peter is kidnapped Terry Thorne (Crowe) is brought in by the insurance people to recover Peter, but soon must leave when it is discovered that the insurance had not been paid lately. At this point you have Peter's wife Alice (Ryan, You've Got Mail) all alone except for Peter's high-strung sister Janis (Pamela Reed). But Terry is infatuated with Alice, and he doesn't want to go back on his promise to bring Peter home. So Terry heads back to Alice and walks in on a scam by some locals to deliver a down payment on the ransom in a very tense and action intensive scene. This scene also introduces us to a friend of Terry's, Dino (David Caruso) who will assist Terry in the recovery process. While we watch the interaction of Alice and Terry in their efforts to bring home Peter, Peter is also working on his own plans to get home. Plus before his planned escape, Peter also works on befriending his captors, which leads to some poignant situations as well as a few humorous moments. I felt that the director Taylor Hackford (The Devil's Advocate) did a good job of explaining how the whole process plays out in a situation such as this, showing what it might be like to be held captive, and providing a glimpse into the political interactions of far too many South American nations. Where I think Hackford fell a bit short was in developing the affections between Crowe and Ryan. To me it seemed as though the director was saying, "well they spent all of these tense moments together so now they will love each other!" Obviously events like these can draw people close, but I just did not think that it was developed as well as it could have been (since the two obviously had a few sparks going between them). Some of the others in the cast include Alun Armstrong, Oscar Carrillo, Michael Kitchen, Daniel Lugo, Claudia Dammert, Aristoteles Picho, and Vicky Hernandez. William Prochnau wrote the screenplay based on an article by Tony Gilroy. Overall I like Proof of Life. It had some good action sequences, a lot of tense situations, good acting, a great story, and of course the beautiful Meg Ryan. To complete this review, I give Proof of Life eight couches out of ten possible butt-rests (AKA couches) for the About-Movies.com rating. Bye. Last updated: Thursday, March 20, 2008 02:49:41 AM |
