RANDOM HEARTS

Susan Granger’s review of “RANDOM HEARTS” (Columbia Pictures)

How would you react to your mate’s adultery? And how much more agonizing would it be if your spouse’s accidental death prevented you from asking the agonizing question: Why? That’s the premise of Sydney Pollack’s romantic drama, adapted from Warren Adler’s novel by Darryl Ponicsan with a screenplay by Kurt Luedtke. And the concept is intriguing. Harrison Ford plays a detective in the Internal Affairs Division of the Washington, D.C. police department and Kristin Scott Thomas is a well-bred New Hampshire congresswoman running for re-election. They’re strangers until his wife and her husband are killed in a plane crash and it’s discovered that the deceased were lovers, secretly traveling as “Mr. and Mrs.” to a tryst in Miami. Grief-stricken, the survivors are thrown together as they attempt to come to terms with their mutual betrayal. He’s masochistically determined to investigate every sordid detail, while she’s deep into denial. “Sooner or later, everybody knows everything,” he informs her. And that scandal is what terrifies her. Then abruptly, inexplicably, they desperately start groping each other. Inevitably, they’re soon in bed, as if the answers to the emotional questions they’re struggling to understand were hidden beneath the sheets. Looking scruffy, wearing an ear stud and sporting the world’s worst haircut, Harrison Ford is sincere, earnest and stoic, while Kristin Scott Thomas’s chilly demeanor fails to ignite this restrained, ultimately dull, rebound romance – even though Sydney Pollack delivers a strong performance as a media strategist. And there’s a forgettable subplot involving gunplay with two corrupt cops. On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “Random Hearts” is a well-crafted but emotionally distant 5. Let’s put it this way – it’s not exactly a date movie.

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