Who payed the critics

Purely Joyful Movie!

In other words,this film is a surreal ride.

The plot isn't so bad, but the pace of storytelling is too slow which makes people bored. Certain moments are so obvious and unnecessary for the main plot. I would've fast-forwarded those moments if it was an online streaming. The ending looks like implying a sequel, not sure if this movie will get one

Although I usually like Harrison Ford and late director Sydney Pollack;s work, "Random Hearts" is a dud and a mess. It is all over the place in story and in acting/directing. There is a pointless subplot with Ford's characters Internal Affairs that eats up a good 25 min of superfluous runtime. The low-point though is the supposed morbid romance/relationship that's born out of bereavement. While this might not be uncommon, Ford and Thomas have next to no chemistry, and the strange obsessions with the mystery of the affair wears out quickly. A young Kate Mara is little more than plot device and filler. Towards the beginning the direction and performance for Ford is whacky and eccentric all of the sudden turning morose. The final scene was atrocious too - trying to bow-tie the movie. 4/10 not recommended.

It's worth more than a 5! Random Hearts is one of very few films shot entirely in the Washington DC area, and I like to revisit for historic reasons.The film unfolds slowly and runs for more than 2 hours – a tough sell in an age of 10-second attention spans. But the plot is more complex than it seems. There is a large cast of sleazy, disgusting people. I got much more from a third viewing; significantly turning up the volume during the first 5 minutes – especially the haranguing, racist lawyer in the court scene. The dialog often seems to be almost mundane filler, but no phrase or word is wasted because everything comes back to haunt later as the lies and deceit crash back down the mountain of infidelity. Meanwhile their workday routines are what anchor the sad survivors.Ford is an IAD detective investigating a crime lord who's brazen enough to attempt murder in broad daylight. Kristin Scott Thomas works very well as the icy preppie congress-critter kicking off a campaign and determined to keep any whiff of negativity at bay. Her strategy is to move on immediately since there's nothing she can do to bring back either her cheating husband or his lover. But Ford is a cop and has to know; not so much out of spite, but because his training taught him to spot liars – and he couldn't believe that his wife had duped him. Naturally they realize their spouses were leading double lives while their friends and co- workers covered for them.The couple finally realize as the gossip reaches her daughter that they both need closure. Both stars played the best, most convincing roles of their careers. Harrison Ford in particular reached his John Wayne moment. The love scene in her car at National Airport is so packed with intense emotion that words escape me.If you hated it the first time around, try it again, and repeat, "this is not a chick flick."

In "The Big Heat," detective Glenn Ford's loving wife is blown up by the heavies and he becomes obsessed with nailing the killers. All his colleagues and friends are sympathetic but as Ford pushes beyond the limits of the envelope, they withdraw their support. There's no controlling Ford's morbid determination.In this movie, Harrison Ford discovers that his wife was killed in an airplane crash, seated next to the married man she was having an affair with, both on their way to a secret holiday in Miami. Harrison Ford is in thrall to a grim determination to find out all he can about the affair -- the hotel room they used in Miami, the rendezvous point in Washington, the night clubs they went to, the gifts they gave each other. It makes little sense because we haven't seen Ford and his wife happy together. If Glenn Ford was driven half crazy by grief, enough to lose his job, Harrison Ford lacks that compelling motive, although he too loses his job.Along the way he discovers Kristen Scott Thomas, the betrayed wife of the man who was cuckolding him. She's in Congress and can't afford the publicity of having the affair made public. They're at odds with each other. He wants to know all the details while she's stoic and wants to put the whole ordeal behind her. Of course Ford and Thomas have an affair.Is there anything beneath this sappy love story besides the romantic musical score? It has holes -- major and minor -- in the plot. Minor: Thomas' daughter, Jessica, is in Andover, "a prep school," described as forty miles from Washington, although Phillips Andover Academy is in Massachusetts, 25 miles north of Boston.Major: While Ford and Thomas hardly know one another, and she's been icy towards him, they fall into a desperate and strenuous clinch in a car and he apparently brings her off in ten seconds.Well, that's rather "intermediate" than "major", because it adumbrates the affair that begins soon after. But here's another major flaw: The last politician to be actually damaged by a divorce or revelation of a wandering spouse was Nelson Rockefeller in 1964. Granted that the press has turned far more tabloid in its sensibilities since then, the fact that one's father has been shacking up on weekends isn't really enough to make sophisticated, sixteen-year-old Jessica drop a plate on the floor in shock. Now if he'd been a serial killer -- There is a sub-theme that has Ford, in Internal Affairs, trying to nail an errant cop. It belongs in an action movie. It seems to have little to do with the developing romance.The performances are okay. Harrison Ford looks glum throughout, wears a hangdog expression, and when he parts for the last time with Thomas he tries to smile openly for the first time and one hears the creak of long-unused facial muscles. Thomas, on the other hand, is more animated. She's quite pretty, her aquiline schnozz notwithstanding. She's appealing -- pale, fragile, wide-eyed -- and from some angles resembles Marlene Dietrich except for von Sternberg's lighting and that thin but prominent nose.But it's mostly a confusing mess. I had no idea where the movie was headed. That's okay because I sometimes get derailed. What was troubling was that I couldn't be at all sure that the writers knew what they were about either.

I decided to watch this on cable because it was made by Sydney Pollack and stars Harrison Ford and Kristin Scott-Thomas.I wish I hadn't. Or perhaps I wish I'd known something about who the writers were. Because this was about as bad as a Hollywood movie can get. Every cliché you can think of, and all of them put in the most obvious places.I can sort of see how it managed to attract the sort of money that's needed to make a Hollywood movie with that sort of star power, because if you take the elements one by one, all of them would sound OK. It's just that they were put together in a manner that makes no sense whatsoever.It's a waste of 131 minutes.