Allie Fox (Harrison Ford (Air Force One)) is fed up with America’s bullshit and decides to
bail on her. He packs up his wife, two
sons and two daughters to live in South America (Belize I think). To be fair he doesn’t only seem to be pissed
at America but all of the developed world.
He wants to live as far from civilization as possible so he can craft
his own new one.
The first thing Allie does is buy a tiny village in the
middle of the jungle and puts its inhabitants to work building housing, communal
structures, planting fields, an irrigation system, etc. He’s created his own little paradise without
electricity, gas, telephone or any other modern conveniences. Well, that is until he builds a giant fucking
ice machine. Now he’s got air
conditioning and ice. But some assholes
try to muscle in on his territory and they clash and you’ll have to see this to
find out what happens.
The story is fascinating and fucked up. Allie essentially brainwashes his family into
thinking America doesn’t even exist anymore and does whatever he must to keep
his own vision afloat. He’s too proud to
ask for help and too crazy to see that he’s hurting the people that love him.
If you’ve ever wanted to see Harrison Ford in a different
kind of role then here you go. I never
thought he was the best actor. I mean
he’s cool as hell but he always plays himself more or less in every role. Here he gets to stretch out as an eccentric
and brilliant but deeply flawed man. His
rantings and philosophies on life are stimulating and extreme. Ford channels that overflowing anger to be
the highlight of the movie. Actually he’s
too over the top for you to take the character very seriously but he’s a lot of
fun to watch nonetheless.
Unfortunately the film as a whole isn’t great but the
characters and plot are really intriguing.
It feels very bookish (which for me is almost always not a good thing) and
that makes sense considering it’s based on one.
(By “bookish” generally what I mean is there are ideas that sounded good
on paper but don’t work out so well on screen) This probably works much better
in that medium where there’s more leeway to imagine Allie’s twisted reality.
With some minor tweaking, the right director and right cast
this could’ve been a masterpiece. But
you know, I still recommend it. The
story is different and Allie’s phobia laden world view is thought provoking,
even if it’s totally fucked in my opinion.
One last thing, I gotta say I love this fuckin’ poster with
an uncomfortably close shot of Ford’s face where he looks disheveled and
wearing an extremely suspicious and offbeat expression. The poster is like Allie, uncompromising.
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