ROBERT ZEMECKIS
Bil’s rating (out of 5): BBBBB.
Mexico/USA, 1984. Twentieth Century Fox, El Corazon Producciones S.A., Nina Saxon Film Design, SLM Production Group. Screenplay by Diane Thomas. Cinematography by Dean Cundey. Produced by Michael Douglas. Music by Alan Silvestri. Production Design by Lawrence G. Paull. Costume Design by Marilyn Vance. Film Editing by Donn Cambern, Frank Morriss. Academy Awards 1984. Golden Globe Awards 1984.
Delightful entertainment combines exotic adventure, action, comedy and romance in one terrific package, expertly written by Leslie Dixon and enthusiastically directed by Robert Zemeckis. Kathleen Turner is marvelous as a bookish, lonely romance novelist who gets a call from her sister (Zemeckis’s then-wife Mary Ellen Trainor) that she is in trouble with some Colombian drug lords and would Turner kindly fly down with a secret package and trade it for her sister’s life? Travelling through South America becomes a royal nightmare, however, and things don’t improve too much when she teams up with a selfish cad of an adventurer (Michael Douglas, never more appealing) who gets them in more trouble than she’s already in. Cars chase, guns are shot and heroes get the girl without it ever getting too loud or messy. One hilarious sequence that stands out has the couple being saved from being executed by armed druglords when a group of men realize they’re talking to their favourite romance writer. A surefire winner on any occasion.
