Random Hearts

Right off the top, this is a weird one.  You could maybe call this sexy thriller adjacent.  It’s about a DC internal affairs cop named Dutch (Harrison Ford (The Mosquito Coast)) who loses his wife, Peyton (Susanna Thompson (Little Giants)), in a plane crash only to discover afterward that she was cheating on him.  She was meeting up with her lover, Cullen (Peter Coyote (Sphere)), on that flight so he also got killed.  Dutch makes contact with the guy’s wife, Kay (Kristin Scott Thomas (Under the Cherry Moon)), to let her know what was going on.  She badly wants to turn a blind eye to the entire situation but starts to become as intrigued as Dutch about the history of their spouses’ relationship.  After some probing, resistance and conflicting emotions the widows eventually fall in love.

So where does the thriller part come in?  Well the B plot involves Dutch trying to nail a thieving murdering cop but he’s short on evidence.  Not to mention his only witness gets slayed and tossed in a dumpster.  Dutch starts losing his mind resorting to unethical abuse of power type shit to make his case which ultimately gets him suspended.  The contrast between the two main threads is jarring to say the least.

Honestly, I wouldn’t say this is a very good movie.  Too many things about it don’t work.  One of the biggest and strangest is that the dirty cop story overshadows the love story, at least for me.  It’s just so much more exciting than exploring two couples’ infidelities.  Now this is based on a book so the vastly different tones could possibly mesh better in that format.  I wonder what the pitch meeting for the film was like though.  Was the studio like

Studio: “Are you sure you want the unconventional love plot the main narrative of the picture?  Wouldn’t you rather have the killer cop investigation be the focus?” 

Filmmakers: “No, no.  The love story’s the A plot for sure!”

Studio: “I mean I guess we trust you.  It just seems kinda flipped around.”

Filmmakers: “Don’t worry boss, the romantic tension between Dutch and Kay is gonna ooze off that screen so hard.  And we’ll make the bad guy cop extra evil to balance everything out.”

Studio: “Ok!”

I think you get my point.

Another major issue are the characters.  We’re supposed to like Dutch and Kay not only because they recently lost their spouses, who in addition were incidentally carrying out affairs behind their backs, but also because they’re presented as people of integrity.  I don’t buy it though.  Dutch is meant to be a good hard working cop who makes sure his brethren walk the line.  However, he’s a bit of a hothead who ends up doing illegal shit in pursuit of his suspect.  Furthermore he’s obsessed with Peyton’s clandestine tryst so he borderline harasses her friends, family and co-workers about it.  His existence becomes detrimentally defined by it.  We don’t see him grieve over his wife’s death so I guess this is how he’s processing shit.  Unfortunately he turns into this sad and, frankly, annoying figure.  Kay, meanwhile, is running for Congress so she’s very busy focusing on that.  Her whole thing is yea, she’s a politician, but she’s an honest one.  At the same time she can’t be forthright with her own teenage daughter about her cheating father.  And, of course, Kay is constantly concerned with her image and how recent events will affect her chances of winning the race.  So again, like Dutch she doesn’t come off nearly as likeable as intended.

It doesn’t help that Ford and Thomas don’t have any chemistry either.  They bicker in the beginning with Dutch desperately wanting to talk to Kay about the affair and Kay wanting to pretend like it never happened and move on.  They pull that cheesy move where the leads are fighting with each other and then suddenly embracing and kissing passionately.  Part of this relationship stems from finding solace in the wake of tragedy.  That would be fine if it were played in more of a transactional way.  Instead it comes across much more contrived like these two get together because they’re supposed to.  Ford and Thomas don’t shoot out sparks of love or a ton of warmth even.  Their approaches are too detached.

There are a few other quirks that are worth noting.  Kay finds out (minor spoilers in the rest of this paragraph) her husband was actually having multiple affairs during their marriage.  Amazingly Peyton might’ve been doing the same thing!  Dutch confronts one of her male co-workers about it but gets the I-won’t-even-dignify-that-with-a-response rebuff instead of a straight up “no”.  So inconclusive there.  I don’t totally get the point of piling on the betrayal here.  Why make these characters out to be even bigger assholes than they’re already set up to be?  Next, Cullen and Peyton worked overtime on their cheating.  For one thing they kept a secret apartment together near where they lived.  However, if that wasn’t bad enough they also flew all the way to other states under the guise of business trips to bump uglies.  Sheesh, that’s expensive and a lot of work.  And finally, the audience knows what’s going on from the start with the affair so when we follow Dutch around investigating what Peyton’s been up to it ends up being kinda boring.  Ideally we should be discovering the truth along with Dutch but admittedly the payoff of basically an ordinary affair just isn’t all that gripping so the filmmakers were sorta stuck.

Who got excited about this project?  This was a major studio film so several folks had to be pumped to see this story turned into a star studded blockbuster.  It had been kicking around Hollywood for over a decade to boot.  Look, you can turn anything, anything, into a compelling picture but the results of this one are bizarre.  I know I keep coming back to this but the much more enticing dirty cop B plot is way too robust for what was required.  Fine, we need to establish Dutch is distracted by his wife’s death and adultery so his job performance suffers, but they could’ve scaled it back a touch from him failing to capture a psychotic murderer.  Plus the romance between Dutch and Kay is forced and built on extremely odd circumstances.  And the main characters are irritating in their own ways.

With all of that said you might randomly get a kick out of Random Hearts if you enjoy peculiar beasts.