RANSOM
A film review by Michael John Legeros
Copyright 1996 Michael John Legeros
(Touchstone)
Directed by Ron Howard
Written by Richard Price and Alexander Ignon
Cast Mel Gibson, Rene Russo, Gary Sinise, Delroy Lindo, Lili
Taylor, Brawley Nolte, Liev Schreiber
MPAA Rating "R" (presumably for violence and language)
Running Time 121 minutes
Reviewed at General Cinemas at Pleasant Valley, Raleigh, NC
(08NOV96)
==
RANSOM, director Ron Howard's underwhelming though thoroughly plotted remake of the little-known Glenn Ford film, stars Mel Gibson as a self-promoting, self-protecting, self-made billionaire whose world comes crashing to a halt when his young son is kidnapped. The catch? As the ads have revealed for several months now, instead of given them what they want, he takes their money to a television station and offers a two million-dollar bounty on the kidnappers' heads. This twist, which comes about an hour into the film, is exciting in principle, but doesn't send the story charging forward. Instead of Mel gearing up with a band of bounty hunters-- and wouldn't *that* be something to see!-- we get even more talk, a couple of keen role reversals, and an entirely odd final confrontation between Gibson and Gary Sinese, who plays the mastermind behind the crime.
Sinese is a waste, which I'll detail later, but Gibson gets to go nuts and that's what we pay him for. Other prominent players include Rene Russo (TIN CUP), looking less plastic than usual. She has little to do as the trophy wife, but contributes to the overall suspense by appearing shorter than her co-star. (How did they do that, you'll wonder. Morphing? Trick photography??) The ever-prolific Delroy Lindo (BROKEN ARROW, CLOCKERS) plays the head FBI agent and he's always good. Most interesting is the inclusion of Lily Taylor and Liev Schreiber, established actors from the world of indy cinema who play two of the grungy, Gen-X henchmen. The presence of these unsavory young characters in a Hollywood Event Picture-- not to mention in a Ron Howard film, for gosh sakes!-- suggests that the new villain of the nineties may be of the dirty, tattooed, cigarette-smoking, cereal-eating, cyber-phreaking, rerun- watching variety. Who's that guy with the nose ring, Robin? I don't know, Batman, better blow him away.
Both heroes and villains get equal time and that makes for a well- balanced story, with everyone giving a game performance, even when they don't entirely fit in. Like Ms. Russo. The glaring exception is Gary Sinese, who's horribly miscast as the cop-turned-criminal-mastermind. Lieutenant Dan is a good actor who, here, has almost no tangible weight as a heavy. Frankly, he's about as threatening as Joe Pesci's Leo Getz. Okay, okay, okay, but witness his hollow monologue about THE TIME MACHINE to see what he's missing. If the characters don't always work, at least the plot machinery does. It keeps churning away, like the Morlock machinery beneath that future world. The end result is a reasonably entertaining popcorn pic-- two hours of multiplex filler that only crashes and burns when it tries to take itself too seriously. If Ron Howard had recognized RANSOM as the potboiler that it is, he might've trimmed some of the hokum. (Or restored some of the logic. Or replaced that fuzzy score from James Horner. Ugh.) Try not to giggle when something serious is seriously funny, like when Sinese says with a straight face to Taylor: "You know what you're scared of? Your own humanity." I laughed out loud.
Grade: B-
--
Mike Legeros - Raleigh, NC, USA, Earth
legeros@pagesz.net (h) - legeros@unx.sas.com (w)
Visit me in MOVIE HELL
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