Random Hearts (15) General release
It has taken 15 years to bring Warren Adler's novel, Random Hearts, to the screen; it went from producer to producer with several different actors, principally Dustin Hoffman, and any number of writers attached along the way. Finally filmed by Sydney Pollack, it unusually carries separate writing credits for adaptation (Darryl Ponicsan) and screenplay (Kurt Luedtke, who scripted Pollack's multiple-Oscar-winning Out of Africa).
The attraction of the material is probably summed up in the movie's publicity blurb: "In a perfect world, they never would have met." They are Dutch Van Den Broeck, a Washington DC sergeant who works in the internal affairs division, and Kay Chandler, a driven Republican congresswoman seeking re-election to her New Hampshire seat. (In the book the male character is an assistant to a congressman, which could have had them meeting all too easily.)
What brings them together is a fatal plane crash which kills Dutch's wife and Kay's husband - and the revelation that the dead spouses were involved in an adulterous affair with each other. As he ponders when his wife last was honest with him, Dutch applies his detective skills and experience - and his badge - to get to the roots of the affair, and he approaches this with a combination of morbid fascination, hurt pride, grief and a sense of loss. Kay responds by way of denial, throwing herself back into her re-election campaign.
Random Hearts is a narrative game of two halves in which the first half is by far the more interesting as it sets up a quite involving scenario, while the second half mostly squanders that promise. Because the two protagonists have nothing in common but their deceased unfaithful partners, the relationship which the screenplay strives to concoct between them fails to convince, and this is not helped by the clear lack of any chemistry between the two principal actors, Harrison Ford and Kristin Scott Thomas. A sub-plot dealing with police corruption and murder seems entirely perfunctory.
- Michael Dwyer
Onegin (PG) Screen at D'Olier Street, Capitol, Cork
Something of a family affair, this new British version of Alexander Pushkin's novel, Evgeny Onegin, has Ralph Fiennes in the title role, his brother Magnus composing the score, and sister Martha directing. All three acquit themselves rather well, particularly Martha, a successful commercials director who brings a highly individual visual sensibility to Pushkin's tale of thwarted love among the Russian aristocracy in the early 19th century.
As Onegin, the cynical St Petersburg sophisticate who arrives in the provinces to take over his late uncle's estate, Ralph (with so many Fienneses around, Christian names are unavoidable) gives an impressively well-modulated, unshowy performance. As Tatyana, the young neighbour who expresses her unrequited love for him, Liv Tyler is highly impressive, as are Lena Headey as her sister, and Toby Stephens as Headey's fiance, Lensky, whose friendship with Onegin ends in tragedy. In fact, Onegin is a treasure trove of good acting, with Martin Donovan, Harriet Walter and Irene Worth all impressing in minor roles.
In Martha Fiennes's hands, the tragedy is played out against bleakly beautiful landscapes and in the chilly mansions of St Petersburg, all of them shot in muted, washedout colours. The austere style, economical editing and strong acting mark Fiennes out as a director of considerable talent, and Onegin as a debut of some note.
- Hugh Linehan
Brokedown Palace (18) Selected cinemas
Like last year's Return to Paradise, Jonathan Kaplan's Brokedown Palace examines themes of self-sacrifice and heroism through a story of young Americans jailed for drug offences in south-east Asia. It's the sort of subject matter which leaves film-makers open to accusations of cultural insensitivity and Western arrogance, and Kaplan's film is hardly going to be well received in official circles in Thailand, where it's set (although it was actually filmed in the Philippines), with its depiction of a ramshackle and corrupt legal system. But, those reservations aside, Brokedown Palace is a thoughtful, well-made film which largely avoids the melodramatic excesses of films such as Midnight Express.
Claire Danes and Kate Beckinsale play two Ohio teenagers, just graduated from high school, who decide to take a holiday in Bangkok when their parents think they're actually going to safe, American, Hawaii. During their stay in the city, they encounter a young Australian (Daniel Lapaine), with whom Beckinsale spends the night, and who suggests they come with him on a trip to Hong Kong. On their way to their flight, they are stopped, searched and arrested for possession of several kilos of heroin. Sentenced to 33 years in the ramshackle prison whose nickname gives the film its title, Danes and Beckinsale can only rely on one apparently sleazy lawyer (Bill Pullman) to get them out, a prospect which becomes increasingly unlikely as the months drag by and their friendship falls apart.
Kaplan's directorial career has been based on creating strong, dramatic roles for women in films such as The Accused and Love Field, and here he focuses to good effect on the developing strains between his two young leads. Just as importantly, he doesn't simplify the issues, and never resolves the ambiguities about the events leading up to the arrest. The result is an intelligent, surprisingly subtle film which never patronises its audience and keeps us guessing up until its closing scene.
- Hugh Linehan
EdTV (15) General release
Long-delayed in opening here, presumably to distance it from the similarly themed The Truman Show, Ron Howard's soft satire on our media age features Matthew McConaughey as Ed, an easy-going slacker from Texas who works in a San Francisco video store and is chosen by a ratings-hungry cable TV company as the subject of a 24-hour-a-day television show. The show's slogan becomes: "All Ed. All the time."
This inevitably creates problems in Ed's personal and family life. Ratings rocket when he gets involved with his brother's girlfriend (Jenna Elfman). His estranged father (Dennis Hopper), who abandoned the family years earlier, returns and wreaks havoc. Ed's brother (Woody Harrelson) tries to cash in on the show's success to promote his own business.
The difference between Ed and Truman Burbank is that Ed is aware that he is being filmed and has agreed to it. However, he learns the hard way - like so many of those misguided people who allow themselves to be humiliated on those ghastly confessional/ confrontational US talk shows - that instead of achieving fame and fortune, he is being used as mere fodder for sensation-mongers and will be forgotten within days as more and more saps follow him on to this assembly line.
Obvious as this message might be, it's worth restating - and Ron Howard delivers it in a generally witty, if rather predictable, context. He also assembles a good cast which also includes Ellen DeGeneres, Martin Landau, Sally Kirkland, Rob Reiner and Elizabeth Hurley.
Agreeable and diverting as EdTV proves, it remains firmly overshadowed by Peter Weir's far superior The Truman Show - even though Howard's film is actually a remake of a French-Canadian movie which preceded Weir's movie, the 1994 Louis XIX: Roi des Ondes (King of the Airwaves).
- Michael Dwyer
Fanny and Elvis (15) Selected cinemas
In the movie business they're called "romcoms", which sums up the glib and formulaic approach to that much-abused genre, the romantic comedy. The so-called boom in British film production of the last couple of years has thrown up some particularly dismal attempts: think of Swing, Fever Pitch, or Martha, Meet Frank, Daniel and Laurence. In comparison, Kay Mellor's amiable, Yorkshire-set drama about the effects of a loudly ticking biological clock on a thirtysomething woman is entertaining enough, even if it's not going to set the house on fire.
The thirtysomething in question is Kate (Kerry Fox), a romantic novelist on the verge of getting her first book published, who is hit by a double whammy when her doctor informs her she's fast running out of time to have a baby, and her husband (David Morrissey) announces that he's leaving her for another woman, Samantha (Gaynor Faye). Thrown into emotional turmoil and financial distress, she finds herself taking in a lodger to make ends meet, in the form of brash, arrogant car dealer Ray Winstone, who just happens to be Samantha's husband. In true romcom fashion, the two initially despise each other before the romantic sparks begin to fly, and there are misunderstandings and fallings-out a-plenty before the final, millennial clinch (this is the first of a mini-wave of forthcoming films to incorporate Y2K into their final reels).
It's predictable stuff, but writer-director Kay Mellor's strong track record in TV drama stands her in good stead in keeping the plotlines entertaining and the characters believable, while the rolling Yorkshire landscapes are very easy on the eye. That staple of the genre, the supportive gay friend, is well played by Ben Daniels, who has his own romantic subplot. But the main theme of Fanny and Elvis is babies and how to make them, with Fox and the ever-reliable Winstone turning in good performances as the unlikely parents-to-be.
- Hugh Linehan
