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Review by Susan Granger
2 stars out of 4
How would you react to your mate's adultery? And how much
more agonizing would it be if your spouse's accidental death prevented
you from asking the agonizing question: Why? That's the premise of
Sydney Pollack's romantic drama, adapted from Warren Adler's novel by
Darryl Ponicsan with a screenplay by Kurt Luedtke. And the concept is
intriguing. Harrison Ford plays a detective in the Internal Affairs
Division of the Washington, D.C. police department and Kristin Scott
Thomas is a well-bred New Hampshire congresswoman running for
re-election. They're strangers until his wife and her husband are
killed in a plane crash and it's discovered that the deceased were
lovers, secretly traveling as "Mr. and Mrs." to a tryst in
Miami. Grief-stricken, the survivors are thrown together as they
attempt to come to terms with their mutual betrayal. He's
masochistically determined to investigate every sordid detail, while
she's deep into denial. "Sooner or later, everybody knows everything,"
he informs her. And that scandal is what terrifies her. Then abruptly,
inexplicably, they desperately start groping each other. Inevitably,
they're soon in bed, as if the answers to the emotional questions
they're struggling to understand were hidden beneath the
sheets. Looking scruffy, wearing an ear stud and sporting the world's
worst haircut, Harrison Ford is sincere, earnest and stoic, while
Kristin Scott Thomas's chilly demeanor fails to ignite this
restrained, ultimately dull, rebound romance - even though Sydney
Pollack delivers a strong performance as a media strategist. And
there's a forgettable subplot involving gunplay with two corrupt
cops. On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, "Random Hearts" is a
well-crafted but emotionally distant 5. Let's put it this way - it's
not exactly a date movie.
Copyright © 1999 Susan Granger
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