BEFORE: Russell Crowe carries over from "Fathers & Daughters", and now that my Father's Day chain is over, I'm going to spend a few days with Mr. Crowe and then a few days with Ben Affleck, and that should get me to the end of the month.
Now, my debate after adding "Onward" was, since I've got one film too many in the chain, which one should I drop? I'd prefer to not drop the films I have on DVD or DVR, because it's a space issue - and dropping one of the films on Netflix doesn't help me shorten my queue there, so in the end it came down to a choice between today's film, which I'm viewing on iTunes, or "Jay and Silent Bob Reboot", which is on AmazonPrime. I would have preferred to watch the "Jay and Silent Bob" movie, assuming it's good (which I can't really confirm without, you know, watching it) but on the other hand, it's got such a large cast that it seems a shame to just sandwich it between two other movies with Ben Affleck. Maybe I should save it for later on, in case it helps me get out of a linking jam in August or September. So in a way that's one vote for each movie, what to do? I think "Proof of Life" sort of fits in more thematically, because I've got a bunch of action films coming up. So that's two votes "Yay" and one vote "Nay" for "Proof of Life".
But in the end, it came down to my weekend travel plans. If I were to schedule "Jay and Silent Bob Reboot", which is available on AmazonPrime, it would fall into a slot on Sunday, when I'm scheduled to be in Massachusetts - where I'll have Netflix available on my phone, but not AmazonPrime. Plus, I wanted to watch that Kevin Smith movie with my wife, or at least offer to watch it with her, because she did enjoy "Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back" years ago. So that's two more reasons for NOT scheduling that film for this weekend, because she's not making the trip with me, I'm taking the train up just to spend a couple days with my parents, who I haven't seen since Christmas. So it's "Proof of Life" today, and "Jay and Silent Bob" gets re-scheduled. But hey, it's the year of the re-schedule, right? And I've had another shot at every film that I've postponed this year, so what's one more at this point?
THE PLOT: Alice hires a professional negotiator to obtain the release of her engineer husband, who has been kidnapped by anti-government guerrillas in South America.
AFTER: I've sort of transitioned from movies about fathers to movies about neglectful fathers, here Russell Crowe plays Terry Thorne, a hostage negotiator who's divorced and has a son, and he's apparently always missing his son's soccer (or is it rugby?) games because he's off in some foreign country trying to get some other kid's father released from kidnappers. This must have been a big problem back in the late 90's, Americans always being held for ransom, because there was some kind of insurance policy that would cover it - K&R, kidnap & ransom insurance.
A problem arises here, however, when the kidnappers (in the fictional country of Tecala) kidnap a man they believe is employed by an oil company, only he's really an engineer there to build a dam, which will ultimately allow the oil company to build a pipeline in a sort of "quid pro quo" situation. There are some hitches in the process, though, since the oil company never gets around to supplying materials to build the dam, and then that company gets taken over by another energy company before the dam can be built, so the company that had the K&R policies no longer exists, plus somebody forgot to pay the premiums on the policy, so this guy's in some real trouble. He doesn't even know enough about the pipeline for the company to want to save him, but try telling that to the kidnappers. And since there's no valid insurance policy the negotiator is told to pack up and go home, only he decides to return and do this job as a freebie. (Yeah, right - as if!)
It doesn't seem likely that somebody would volunteer their services, but right now I do see reports of people volunteering at food banks and other charities, because it's needed and it's the right thing to do. (I made a couple of donations today, once I knew that my unemployment money was still going to come in even though I'm back to work part-time - I felt a bit like I was robbing from the rich to give to the poor.). OK, so maybe I'll give this guy a pass on this one - the engineer's wife isn't rich either, she's tended to do social work near wherever her husband is building stuff, but the engineer's sister, now maybe SHE'S got some money, she might be able to come up with a ransom payment. If only the engineer had been nicer to his sister over the years...
Also, he sort of develops a pseudo-romance with the wife - ah, now we understand his motivation a little bit more. Russell Crowe reportedly started a relationship with the (married) Meg Ryan during this shoot, so I have to wonder if this was a case of life imitating art, or vice versa. The characters don't really act on their attraction, except for one kiss before the mission, but still this has to make you wonder why Terry was working at cross purposes, falling for the wife and also believing beyond rational expectations that the husband was alive. Supposedly it was instinct, he felt deep down in his gut that he could get him back, and he is the expert, after all. And even if he didn't earn any money for getting the engineer back, there was also the chance of another payoff if they could rescue another hostage or two from the same kidnappers.
"Proof of life" is an important step in the negotiation process, during which the kidnappers need to send some kind of evidence that the kidnapped person is still alive, and it can be a photo of him holding a recent newspaper, or allowing him to speak on the phone, or passing along information that only he would know. Once it's been established that he's not dead, then the negotiator and the kidnappers can start working out the ransom details. But until then, the worst part is just not knowing, and I get that. Right now I, like probably a lot of other people, just don't know if I'm going back to work at one of my jobs. Is my boss going to use the pandemic as an excuse for letting me go, or replace me if I don't come back right away? Or have I been made obsolete there? It's almost like I don't want to hear the bad news, but still, it's probably better to know than to not know, right? At least if I'm not wanted back, I can then have more time to set up something else. In the same way, if the kidnapped person is dead, the spouse may not want to know, but still, in the long run, it's better to know than to not know.
We the audience, however, have the advantage of knowing, because part of the film details Peter Bowman's experiences in the kidnappers' camp, where he's made to do physical labor, kept in a shack and tortured by gunshots keeping him awake at all hours, in a manner similar to what's happening in NYC right now with fireworks. I can see tweets from other city people even more annoyed about it than I am, and that's saying something. (Finally, however, a bunch of motorists gathered outside the Mayor's mansion and honked their horns all night, which finally made him realize that he might need to do something. However, what he DID was hold a press conference where he announced his intention to set up a task force to do undercover sting operations to stop the flow of illegal fireworks into the city. But just think about how useless those undercover operations are going to be, now that he went and mentioned them in a PRESS CONFERENCE. What an idiot. Mayor DiBlasio is ultimately just as dumb as Trump, in his own way.)
So this film starts with an action-packed rescue, and then wraps up with another action-packed rescue. It's just too bad they couldn't do anything to pep the really long, boring middle part, which consists of a month-long captivity and negotiations, and seeing them from all perspectives doesn't really make them any more interesting, unfortunately.
Also starring Meg Ryan (last seen in "You've Got Mail"), David Morse (last seen in "Concussion"), Pamela Reed (last seen in "Bob Roberts"), David Caruso (last seen in "Hudson Hawk"), Anthony Heald (last seen in "Red Dragon"), Stanley Anderson (ditto), Michael Byrne (last seen in "A Bridge Too Far"), Alun Armstrong (ditto), Gottfried John, Michael Kitchen (last seen in "Dracula A.D. 1972"), Margo Martindale (last seen in "The Kitchen"), Mario Ernesto Sanchez (last seen in "The Specialist"), Pietro Sibille, Vicky Hernandez, Norma Martinez, Carlos Blanchard, Rowena King (last seen in "The Bucket List"), Diego Trujillo, Alejandro Cordova, Tony Vazquez, Gerard Naprous.
RATING: 6 out of 10 well-fed pigs
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