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| Directed by Sydney Pollack; Starring Harrison Ford, Kristen Scott Thomas, Charles S. Dutton, Bonnie Hunt, Dennis Haysbert, Sydney Pollack, Richard Jenkins, Paul Guilfoyle, Susanna Thompson, Peter Coyote, Dylan Baker, Lynne Thigpen, and Kate Mara |
I’ve been accused to continually play favorites when it comes to favorite directors. Sure I loved Eyes Wide Shut, a film regarded as an atrocity by many, and I do not think that my admiration is simply because of it being Kubrick at the helm. I’ll be the first to admit that Woody Allen’s September, David Fincher’s Alien³, David Cronenberg’s M. Butterfly, Sidney Lumet’s Gloria, and Alfred Hitchcock’s Under Capricorn are all big disappointments, both for their directors and the filmmaking process (Under Capricorn is such a bad film from such a great director that most act as if it never happened). With that said, my slight admiration for Random Hearts is not simply because I happen to think that Tootsie is one of the greatest films of the last twenty-five years. I know that the film is not garnering the greatest of reviews, but I still think the film works.
Random Hearts is a romantic drama about two people brought together by the death of their cheating spouses. Dutch Van Den Broeck (Ford) finds out that his wife Peyton (Thompson) has been having an affair when she dies in a plane crash with another man on the way to Miami. This leads him to Kay Chandler (Thomas), a New Hampshire Congresswoman running for reelection and wife to the man whom Peyton was heading to Miami with. Chandler is less than happy with the details that Dutch brings with him as he tries to sketch a mental image of what was happening between Peyton and Cullen Chandler (Coyote) and she tries to keep away from him, wanting to remaining in the dark about her husband and keep his affair away from the people that want her out of office. The two of course fall in love and the story goes from there working off what must happen for their relationship to work.
The film is really nice to look out with great direction by Pollack and understated cinematography from Phillippe Rousselot using beautiful natural lighting. The two leads do rather good jobs in their roles, with Thomas shining. My problem with the film is that it is way too pushy and overlong. I felt like everything was mapped out at the beginning and I was just running my finger through without being allowed to deviate. Also it is overlong because it gets bogged down in subplots that do not work. Though I enjoyed the additions of Pollack (as Chandler’s campaign manager) and Dutton (as Dutch’s partner in the Washington, DC, Police Force), but the story lines of Chandler’s campaign and Dutch’s trouble with a corrupt cop are out of place and just add too much empty time to the film. Not Pollack’s best, but still a pretty nice little film.
