Random Hearts «½
R, 133m. 1999
Cast & Credits: Harrison Ford (Dutch Van Den Broeck), Kristin Scott Thomas (Kay Chandler), Charles S. Dutton (Alcee), Bonnie Hunt (Wendy Judd), Dennis Haysbert (Detective Beaufort), Sydney Pollack (Carl Broman), Richard Jenkins (Truman). Screenplay by Kurt Luedtke based on Warren Adler’s novel. Directed by Sydney Pollack.
"Random Hearts" offers two of the most boring perspectives in how the two main characters deal with their grief after learning their significant others were having an affair prior to dying in a plane crash.
The movie was made to be a tearjerker but by the time it ended, I had no reason to feel pity or compassion for either of the two leads played by Harrison Ford and Kristin Scott Thomas. Both play characters who don’t know one another but whose lives are drawn together unexpectedly by tragedy.
I am sure the idea looked great on paper. The film asks a number of intriguing questions on the subject of adultery. What would you do if your wife ran off on an unexpected trip you didn’t know about only to die in a plane crash? What would you do if you found out she was on the passenger list under an assumed name? What would you do if you found out after all this time, she was cheating on you? What can you do? You can’t file for divorce. Your wife is already dead.
Such are the questions Ford’s internal affairs Detective Dutch Van Den Broeck pursues. The answer for him is to question the wife, a Republican congresswoman named Kay Chandler (Thomas) whose husband (Peter Coyote) also died on the flight and whom Van Den Brock’s wife was sitting next to.
I have always assumed when it comes to people having affairs that the persons most hurt by their spouse’s actions would be the woman. What’s interesting here is it turns out to be the man.
Ford’s Van Den Broeck treats his loss as an obsession that almost ruins his career in law enforcement as he endlessly tries to find out why his wife was cheating on him for months. At one point, he meets Kay in Miami at the very hotel their spouses were reportedly going to stay in that weekend and the two walk the party streets at night like happy zombies just going through the motions. It is only a matter of time before the couple reluctantly make love in Kay’s car at the airport shortly after they have a good cry.
In Chandler’s case, she wants to put the issue behind her. To her, it is all in the past. She is like First Lady Hillary Clinton, who after learning about her husband’s latest infidelities over a year and a half ago, refused to shed any emotion in public. Chandler repeatedly tells Van Den Broeck to “Let it go” almost every time they meet and forget about what’s happened.
What was astounding as I sat there watching Random Hearts was how neither one asked themselves much less thought about why their spouses had an affair but to me, the answer was obvious. Kay was simply too busy with her reelection campaign in Washington to notice there was something going on. When Kay learns her husband died on the plane, she insists he wasn’t going to Miami. He was headed to New York. While Van Den Broeck was too busy investigating corrupt cops to consider what was going on at home.
The two leads have some memorable moments though.
Ford stares for hours at their family photo the two took together years back while waiting for the dreaded phone call to come from airline authorities. He is a towering, brooding, troubled presence who wants answers but the most he ever gets is the message his wife leaves on Coyote’s answering machine that asks, “What are we doing?”
The best scene Thomas has is where her daughter asks if her father, whom she idolizes, was having an affair with Van Den Broeck’s wife. Chandler doesn’t know how to explain it to her. It brought to mind in this post Clinton/Monica Lewinsky era how the president’s daughter, Chelsea, might have felt when the real truth came out about her father’s infidelities.
The movie unfortunately falls apart in the last 45 minutes as it throws one unexpected and needless subplot after another. Ford’s character, for example, is trying to bring a corrupt officer to justice while Chandler’s friend (Bonnie Hunt) tells Kay how she knew about her husband’s affairs but never said a word.
More annoying is composer Dave Grusin’s upbeat musical score on piano. A movie like this would have benefited from John Barry’s sad, melodramatic slow-moving tones he did for "Dances With Wolves" (1990) and "Chaplin" (1992). If nothing else, Barry’s music probably would have made the film more emotionally effective.
If 1999 is remembered for anything when it comes to motion pictures, it will probably be the year a new Star Wars movie came out that reviled most critics and disappointed fans of the original trilogy, that people blamed excessive violence in movies like "The Matrix" (1999) to influence two misguided souls to go on a killing spree in Littleton, Colorado, and that adultery was a hot subject in movies.
"Random Hearts" marks the fifth film and probably not the last to address the subject. "Pushing Tin", "Summer of Sam" and "American Beauty" incorporated the idea in subplots. While Stanley Kubrick’s "Eyes Wide Shut" presented another perspective that a woman dreaming about cheating on her husband with another man is just as bad as committing the actual act itself.
Director Sydney Pollack ("Tootsie" - 1982) makes it clear in Random Hearts he wanted the audience to feel sorry for Dutch Van Den Broeck and Kay Chandler. Both characters go through a lot of emotional turmoil throughout the film, but I saw nothing at the center.
I only saw emptiness.
©10/14/99
R, 133m. 1999
Cast & Credits: Harrison Ford (Dutch Van Den Broeck), Kristin Scott Thomas (Kay Chandler), Charles S. Dutton (Alcee), Bonnie Hunt (Wendy Judd), Dennis Haysbert (Detective Beaufort), Sydney Pollack (Carl Broman), Richard Jenkins (Truman). Screenplay by Kurt Luedtke based on Warren Adler’s novel. Directed by Sydney Pollack.
The movie was made to be a tearjerker but by the time it ended, I had no reason to feel pity or compassion for either of the two leads played by Harrison Ford and Kristin Scott Thomas. Both play characters who don’t know one another but whose lives are drawn together unexpectedly by tragedy.
I am sure the idea looked great on paper. The film asks a number of intriguing questions on the subject of adultery. What would you do if your wife ran off on an unexpected trip you didn’t know about only to die in a plane crash? What would you do if you found out she was on the passenger list under an assumed name? What would you do if you found out after all this time, she was cheating on you? What can you do? You can’t file for divorce. Your wife is already dead.
Such are the questions Ford’s internal affairs Detective Dutch Van Den Broeck pursues. The answer for him is to question the wife, a Republican congresswoman named Kay Chandler (Thomas) whose husband (Peter Coyote) also died on the flight and whom Van Den Brock’s wife was sitting next to.
I have always assumed when it comes to people having affairs that the persons most hurt by their spouse’s actions would be the woman. What’s interesting here is it turns out to be the man.
Ford’s Van Den Broeck treats his loss as an obsession that almost ruins his career in law enforcement as he endlessly tries to find out why his wife was cheating on him for months. At one point, he meets Kay in Miami at the very hotel their spouses were reportedly going to stay in that weekend and the two walk the party streets at night like happy zombies just going through the motions. It is only a matter of time before the couple reluctantly make love in Kay’s car at the airport shortly after they have a good cry.
In Chandler’s case, she wants to put the issue behind her. To her, it is all in the past. She is like First Lady Hillary Clinton, who after learning about her husband’s latest infidelities over a year and a half ago, refused to shed any emotion in public. Chandler repeatedly tells Van Den Broeck to “Let it go” almost every time they meet and forget about what’s happened.
What was astounding as I sat there watching Random Hearts was how neither one asked themselves much less thought about why their spouses had an affair but to me, the answer was obvious. Kay was simply too busy with her reelection campaign in Washington to notice there was something going on. When Kay learns her husband died on the plane, she insists he wasn’t going to Miami. He was headed to New York. While Van Den Broeck was too busy investigating corrupt cops to consider what was going on at home.
The two leads have some memorable moments though.
Ford stares for hours at their family photo the two took together years back while waiting for the dreaded phone call to come from airline authorities. He is a towering, brooding, troubled presence who wants answers but the most he ever gets is the message his wife leaves on Coyote’s answering machine that asks, “What are we doing?”
The best scene Thomas has is where her daughter asks if her father, whom she idolizes, was having an affair with Van Den Broeck’s wife. Chandler doesn’t know how to explain it to her. It brought to mind in this post Clinton/Monica Lewinsky era how the president’s daughter, Chelsea, might have felt when the real truth came out about her father’s infidelities.
The movie unfortunately falls apart in the last 45 minutes as it throws one unexpected and needless subplot after another. Ford’s character, for example, is trying to bring a corrupt officer to justice while Chandler’s friend (Bonnie Hunt) tells Kay how she knew about her husband’s affairs but never said a word.
More annoying is composer Dave Grusin’s upbeat musical score on piano. A movie like this would have benefited from John Barry’s sad, melodramatic slow-moving tones he did for "Dances With Wolves" (1990) and "Chaplin" (1992). If nothing else, Barry’s music probably would have made the film more emotionally effective.
If 1999 is remembered for anything when it comes to motion pictures, it will probably be the year a new Star Wars movie came out that reviled most critics and disappointed fans of the original trilogy, that people blamed excessive violence in movies like "The Matrix" (1999) to influence two misguided souls to go on a killing spree in Littleton, Colorado, and that adultery was a hot subject in movies.
"Random Hearts" marks the fifth film and probably not the last to address the subject. "Pushing Tin", "Summer of Sam" and "American Beauty" incorporated the idea in subplots. While Stanley Kubrick’s "Eyes Wide Shut" presented another perspective that a woman dreaming about cheating on her husband with another man is just as bad as committing the actual act itself.
Director Sydney Pollack ("Tootsie" - 1982) makes it clear in Random Hearts he wanted the audience to feel sorry for Dutch Van Den Broeck and Kay Chandler. Both characters go through a lot of emotional turmoil throughout the film, but I saw nothing at the center.
I only saw emptiness.
©10/14/99
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