Random Hearts (1999)

Whenever I see a review that accuses the film of being boring, I usually assume that the reviewer is a teenaged moron with the attention span of a radish and approximately the same intelligence. And then I watch the film and find it utterly captivating. Not this time!At risk of sounding like a teenaged moron, I must say that Random Hearts was totally boring. I mean an utter snooze-fest. Soporific. Mind-numbingly dull. Pointless. Tedious. Monotonous. And also way too long.The paper-thin plot could have made a decent enough 1 hour drama, but here (for a budget of 64 million bucks!!!) a narrative that could easily be described in one sentence gets dragged out to over two hours of bumbling, inept story-telling; lousy pacing from both director and editor, a sizable array of respected actors being utterly wasted/misused, recycled music that is almost identical to The Firm (same director and composer) with splashes of Tootsie (same director and composer) and the clumsiest, most ill-conceived and poorly executed subplot (padding) I've ever seen in a movie that wasn't made by 16-year-old film students.Altogether an amateurish, lazy, and execrable waste of time.

"Random Hearts" is about two widowed people who found out that their spouses were having affairs with each other's husband and wife, their dead spouses were found on an aeroplane when it crashed. Harrison Ford plays "Sergeant William 'Dutch' Van Den Broeck", Kristin Scott Thomas plays "Kay Chandler" a congresswoman. "Dutch" finds out first that his wife was having an affair with "Kay"'s husband, she eventually finds out and the situation brings them into each others lives."Random Hearts" is an unusual romantic drama based on a novel. The movie is slow-paced at times, but this is the type of flick that doesn't really go anywhere, it's about the connection between these two people "Dutch" and "Kay", as the film goes on you can't help but want these two new people to start a serious relationship, but it's more of a fling, things get intense at times and it's clear that 'Dutch' is more emotionally invested in his deceased wife's affair to the point where we seem him act like a total jerk (in one particular scene he picks up "Kay"'s purse and aggressively tips all the contents out on the kitchen counter looking for a key or whatever it was).This film gives us a "will they or won't they" stay in each other's lives, there's two other story lines that have a supporting role and that's "Kay"'s very public political life and "Dutch"'s job as a Sergeant, we see him go on a stakeout and get shot - that sideline story is a little weak, but then again so is this entire movie plot.The performances are okay, it is the ending that's the major problem, we see that "Dutch" is waiting for "Kay" at the airport and says that he wants to stay in contact with her, she is a little standoffish while still being friendly at the same time, he says that they should go on a date sometime and she agrees, then she walks off to the plane on her own, this is actually a realistic scenario, but this is not real life, this is a movie, where is the ending romance? it's labelled a romantic drama for goodness sake, we see these people spend time together all cosy at his cabin, they go around investigating every detail of their deceased spouses affair, and she is saying no to a relationship with him? why, exactly? her career is a weak excuse, by the end of the flick it's all in the papers and on the news about both of their spouses having an affair, so there's nothing to hide anymore, maybe "Kay" had a change of heart and doesn't want a relationship, but the thing is romantic dramas are supposed to make viewers feel all warm, but we're left feeling depressed. The end scene is not satisfying especially after all they've been through. Some end scenes shouldn't be clichéd, but that is only when they can pull it off without making the viewers feel like they regret watching, "Random Hearts" however should have had a clichéd ending and had him get on the plane with her.

Random Hearts (1999): Dir: Sydney Pollack / Cast: Harrison Ford, Kristen Scott Thomas, Charles S. Dutton, Bonnie Hunt, Dennis Haysbert: Advertised as a disaster film, romance, suspense, and drama. It fails on all accounts. It regards the reality of people coming together through circumstances beyond their control. Harrison Ford stars as a cop whose wife died in a plane crash. Kristen Scott Thomas plays a congresswoman whose husband died in the same crash. Could they have been having an affair? Are trees green in summer? It will surprise no one when they become romantically linked. Even their first sexual encounter in a car seems horribly cliché. Director Sidney Pollack does his best but the production looks drab. He previously directed Ford in Sabrina but this hardly matches his work in films such as Absence of Malice and Tootsie. Apparently Ford being a major box office draw isn't working for Pollack. Perhaps he should cast him in an action film, since he generally draws in those. Ford and Thomas cannot save this dreary film and seem to be coasting on star power only. Charles S. Dutton and Bonnie Hunt appear in flat supporting roles. Part of the problem is that the marketing doesn't know what the film is. The romance is bland at best and the thriller elements are a blink and miss variety. Cheap film with a cheap payoff only interested in a sigh from the audience. Many will sigh from impatience. Score: 2 / 10

Okay, Billy Wilder got their first with Avanti in which Jack Lemmon and Juliette Mills journey to Ischia to claim the respective bodies of his father and her mother who have been killed in a road accident, only to discover that they have been meeting on the island for years clandestinely. They start out as antagonists and end up in the sack, natch. Here Sydney Pollack puts a little spin on it inasmuch as Ford and Scott Thomas are not on a vacation island thousands of miles from home when - in this case - their spouses rather than parents - fail to survive a plane crash. Pollack also allows us to see both Ford and Scott Thomas at work whereas Lemmon on Mills had left their day jobs behind. Still there are enough similarities for plagiarism to rear its ugly head, so what else is knew. This eluded me on release and I found a Russian version in a Thrift Shop, recognized Scott Thomas on the box, know she always delivers so took it home. I was pleasantly surprised, especially after reading the first few pans here on IMDb. Scott Thomas was good as ever and a tad warmer than she often plays and works well with Ford who probably was, as someone remarked, a touch old for the role. Overall I enjoyed it and may well give it another whirl in a year or so.