Word: proofing
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Dates: during 2000-2000
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Midway through Proof of Life, Terry Thorne (Russell Crowe), an elite hostage negotiator, gets on the radio and begins the long, exhaustive game of cat and mouse that will decide the fate of Peter Bowman (David Morse), an American engineer in the hands of South American radicals. The voice on the other end demands an exorbitant sum of money. Thorne calmly refuses, offering a much lower amount, and the dialogue abrutply ends with the chilling threat that Bowman is as good as dead. As the surrounding family members freak out, Thorne brushes them off, saying "You'll get used...
...Proof of Life is one of those old-fashioned crackerjack thrillers that shifts across a number of exotic locales, yet it is also a film hot-wired directly into contemporary culture. With global economics continually expanding, the threat to prominent Americans in regions of political turmoil is more acute than ever-thus negotiators with the steel-edged nerves needed to manipulate the most delicate of situations have become a critical necessity (not surprisingly, an extensive article on the subject served as the basis for the screenplay). In a sequence of terrifying simplicity, Bowman, who was commissioned to build...
...hardly deny that director Taylor Hackford (The Devil's Advocate) is a skilled craftsman (although I've always wondered how a filmmaker can make it when he has the word "hack" in his name). Proof of Life is a handsome and intelligent picture that's both paced and shot beautifully. The breath-taking, ultra-gritty finale, in which Thorne and his team of mercenaries attempt a daring rescue operation, is reminiscent of the best work of Michael Mann. And yet the finale is also the only point in the movie in which Hackford the storyteller is truly allowed to cast...
...Ryan, whose off-camera romantic shenanigans made the picture notorious months before it hit theaters. Those expecting to the two leads to scorch the screen, however, will be shocked and perhaps even bitterly disappointed to see just how little sexual tension develops between the two stars. Curiously, Proof of Life is not structured as a romance-the greatest shortcoming of the screenplay is its failure to develop Thorne's central conflict, in which a man who's always in control finds that what he has to do has become almost directly opposed to what he wants to do. The cast...
...worth nothing that Hackford, while no artistic genius, is a grown-up director and Proof of Life is one of those all too rare adult films that isn't interested in being hip or catering to the MTV generation. That alone makes it a picture worthy of admiration and gives hope that there are still a few serious, no-frills commercial filmmakers out there. Proof of Life is a flawed vision, but the fact that it even has a vision still puts this sweeping adventure-epic ahead of the game...