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Random Hearts

1999, Movie, R, 131 mins

Random Hearts: Review

RANDOM HEARTS
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Let's face it: Harrison Ford is an emotional black hole who can suck the air out of a movie faster than you can say "seal all doors and windows." Witness this scrupulously unsensational drama about the emotional fallout from a plane crash. It starts as internal affairs investigator "Dutch" Van Den Broeck (Ford) and Congresswoman Kay Chandler (Kristin Scott-Thomas) learn that their spouses were having a long-term affair after the adulterers die en route to a dirty weekend in Miami. Van Den Broeck takes his wife's betrayal harder than her death; he's not comfortable with juggling mutually contradictory notions like "she loved me" and "she lied to me." Chandler, too, thought she was happily married and is devastated by the evidence that she wasn't. But where Van Den Broeck is a scab-picker who won't stop worrying at the situation until he's alienated everyone he or his late wife ever knew, Chandler just wants to put it behind her. Her daughter doesn't need to have her father's image sullied, Chandler reasons, and anyway, she needs to channel her emotional energy into her re-election campaign. They don't even like each other, but emotional maelstrom generated by the crash draws them inevitably together. All this sounds more engaging then it actually is; the filmmakers seem to have succumbed to the idea that seriousness equates absence of conventional entertainment values. Despite the vaguely titillating ad campaign, this isn't an erotically driven story. But it would help if the leads weren't brittle (Scott-Thomas) and stone-faced (Ford). Sure, Ford once had a devil-may-care sort of appeal, but he's driven that quality out of himself role by torturous role. And on top of it all, the movie is long: There's just no reason why it should take more than two hours for so little to happen. leave a comment --Maitland McDonagh
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