the audience applauded

Strong and Moving!

an ambitious but ultimately ineffective debut endeavor.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

While this movie starts with a promising storyline and a character that while not always likable (and quite self-absorbed for the entirety of the film), still has interesting thoughts on the American way of living and an incredible craftsmanship, it soon leaves you with disdain about this character and the interest that had been developed in the 1st hour of the movie soon turns into a drag, leaving you feeling frustrated about why these characters are being silent towards the father's reckless and almost-deadly treatment. The father turns from a man with a vision of building a civilisation from scratch into a man obsessed with not abiding to any form of current civilisation and living. He drags his family through dangerous situations for the sole purpose of making a living based on his narrow-minded view of how humans should live life. And while this could still make for an interesting storyline, the sole outcome of the terrain his family experiences is that with his sudden passing, they can now be free to live life the way they want to – a somehow unsatisfying final outcome when you consider the ordeal these people had to go through.

There's a touch of John Galt about Harrison Ford's protagonist in 'The Mosquito Coast': a brilliant, welfare-hating, atheistic inventor who retires from a civilised world full of moochers and looters and consequently doomed to collapse. He (and the film) also seem to share Ayn Rand's view of a world not occupied by Europeans as a virgin territory. Yet the film shifts from portraying him as a Randian hero to something rather less attractive; and odd moments towards the end reminded me of Andrey Zvyagintsev's superb 'The Return', albeit without the subtlety. Subtlety is really the key here: the film needs to show how the character's final descent is a natural consequence of his worldview, not some random madness; but Harrison Ford lacks the depth as an actor to pull this off. A young Helen Mirren co-stars, but the film is fundamentally all about Ford, and he can't fully convey the darkness of the man. It's a shame: there's a good (although somewhat fabulous) parable in the underlying storyline.

From director Peter Weir (Gallipoli, Witness, Dead Poets Society, The Truman Show), I expected this to be some kind of Cast Away or Swiss Family Robinson style desert island film, I watched it because of the three good leading stars. Basically Allie Fox (Harrison Ford) is the eccentric and arrogant inventor who doesn't do things by the book, and his troubled genius, intense moods and incredible drive have given the idea, apparently on a sudden whim, to make a new somewhere else. So with his family, Mother Fox (Dame Helen Mirren), teenage son Charlie (River Phoenix), younger son Jerry (Jadrien Steele) and young twins April and clover (twins Hilary and Rebecca Gordon), they travel to the jungles of Central America to live their new life. Over time, in the middle of the jungle, a new factory is built, and the experiment to create large ice cubes to sell to the local people and all over is successful. There are problems with their new environment though, not just from the inquisitive and sometimes vicious tribes people, from Christian missionary Reverend Spellgood (Andre Gregory) who has a strong hatred for Communists, but mostly from Allie. His attitude, strong attitudes and short fuse make him a bad father, a poor husband, and more than anything a hateful control freak and he wants things done his way and has almost no care for anything or anyone else. It comes to the point when Allie really goes over the edge and too far in his self brewing madness, he destroys the ice factory because of severe paranoia, and the family know that they have to leave. In the end, the only way Allie is finally put to rest and his terrible ways stopped is to be shot and paralysed, Mother upset, but the family do finally leave the jungle and the final narration by Charlie says he did die, but the family go on with hope. Also starring Conrad Roberts as Mr. Haddy, The Goonies' Martha Plimpton as Emily Spellgood and Dick O'Neill as Mr. Polski. Mirren gives a reasonable performance as the concerned and forced wife and mother of the family, and Phoenix is good seeming a little older than he actually is, but Ford is the big draw as he grips you, and even makes you uncomfortable, with his manic dark character who you can both hate and feel no sympathy for, which makes him so good, the story is alright, overall I wonder about the four stars out of five rating by the critics, but it is a watchable drama. It was nominated the Golden Globe for Best Original Score for Maurice Jarre. Good!

I've recently re-watched this movie and, after looking up the reviews on here, was quite surprised to see such a low rating and such negative reviews. I'm still not quite sure why, but my thoughts are that 1. people mistake this for a movie about ideas instead of a movie about a man, and 2. people think this will be a movie in which Harrison Ford plays the same old character instead of acts.Ford's character is not likable, which I think is the point. He is a narcissist blinded to the way the world works. He believes he can force the universe to his own will, as a narcissist will do. Certainly, the film takes this character to an extreme, but isn't that the point of drama? I found the characterization to be very spot on.This isn't the usual Hollywood slop pretending to be intellectual and deep. It is a study of complicated characters living in a complicated world without easy answers or neat conclusions.