Random Hearts

Availability

Switchbucs	Switcher	Switches	Switcher Rating
16	Stella Disc, Artwork	407	137	[ Buy It ]
15	gregc Disc, Artwork	188	80	[ Buy It ]

These members have it but are not switching it at this time mlaisure

Theatrical Release

October 8, 1999

DVD Release

October 8, 1999

Studio

Sony Pictures

Rated

R (Restricted)

Directors

Actors

Dylan Baker, Christina Chang, Bill Cobbs, Peter Coyote, Charles S. Dutton, Susan Floyd, Harrison Ford, Paul Guilfoyle (II), Dennis Haysbert, Bonnie Hunt, Michelle Hurd, Richard Jenkins, Nelson Landrieu, Kate Mara, Kristin Scott Thomas, Brooke Smith, Lynne Thigpen, Ariana Thomas, Susanna Thompson, Reiko Aylesworth

Switchers Rate This:

Currently selling for $4.48 NEW at Amazon.com

• Have It | 
•  | 
• Wish It | 
• Rate It

0

Formats

• Anamorphic
• Closed-captioned
• Color
• Dolby
• Widescreen
• NTSC

Additional Information

Reviled by critics and largely ignored by moviegoers when released in 1999, Random Hearts is a pox on the reputations of Harrison Ford, Kristin Scott Thomas, and director Sydney Pollack, but it doesn't entirely deserve its lowly fate. The movie's lugubriously paced and its repressed passions are dulled under the weight of relentless melancholy, but Pollack deserves credit for defying the Hollywood Zeitgeist with a mature, substantial film about the power of betrayal to reach beyond the grave.

Ford plays a Washington, D.C. detective; Scott Thomas is a Congresswoman in the midst of a re-election campaign. When their spouses die in a plane crash, the cop is convinced they'd been having an affair, and his obsessive, masochistic quest for the painful truth draws him closer to the Congresswoman despite the mutual risks to their careers and domestic privacy. While she hides behind a façade of denial, his agonized investigation makes him simultaneously unappealing (a risk Ford may have taken as a challenge), sympathetic, and sadly compelling.

Pollack takes his own chances by keeping everything so relentlessly downbeat, but anyone receptive to the story will find that Random Hearts is a subtly rewarding study of tormented adults who've discovered too late the weaknesses of their seemingly stable marriages. It's anything but cheerful, and a subplot involving a corrupt cop (Dennis Haysbert) is a formulaic distraction. But Random Hearts provides welcome relief from dramas that flirt with emotional anguish without delving into its deeper consequences. --Jeff Shannon - Amazon.com