PROOF OF LIFE

'''Proof of Life''' is an American film released in 2000, directed by Taylor Hackford. The film's screenplay was authored by Tony Gilroy, who also was a co-executive producer, and was inspired by William Prochnau's Vanity Fair magazine article "Adventures in the Ransom Trade," and the book ''The Long March To Freedom'' by Thomas Hargruve.^[1]
The picture stars Meg Ryan and Russell Crowe.
It is perhaps best remembered as the film during which the two lead actors both had separate romantic affairs. At the time of filming, Ryan was married to Dennis Quaid, but the two divorced in 2001. The film garnered much reportage in the tabloid press in association with the affairs of these lead actors.
The director, Taylor Hackford, blamed the film's failure at the box office on the negative publicity that had resulted over Crowe and Ryan's affair.

Contents

Plot

Tecala

Critical reception

Cast and ratings

Awards

See also

Footnotes

External links

Plot

Alice Bowman (Meg Ryan) contacts Terry Thorne (Russell Crowe) after her husband Peter (David Morse) is kidnapped by South American rebels.
Thorne is an ex-military officer, an expert skilled in kidnap and ransom (K&R), but his inappropriate attraction to Alice drives him to rescue her husband. There emerges a twisted tale of romance amid the trauma of the kidnap situation.

Tecala

The Republic of Tecala, where ''Proof of Life'' is set, is a fictional South American country. Its geographic and urban appearance, and its political characteristics, were based loosely on a mix of several Andean countries.
Tecala has developed an internal conflict between its government forces and the Liberation Army of Tecala (ELT). The ELT was originally a Marxist guerrilla group supported by the Soviet Union, but after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, the ELT's primary source of funding fell through, and they began kidnapping people for ransom to fund their operations. [1] The ELT was soon powerful enough to seize authority over the cocaine trade in Tecala, with Tecala claimed to supposedly be the second-largest producer after Colombia (in real life, however, Peru is the second-largest cocaine producer). This characterization of the ELT is clearly based above all on the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), or at least on common US perceptions of the group.
The ELT is still at war with the government, participating in military skirmishes and carrying out terrorist bombings in the capital city of Tecala. Maps show Tecala to be landlocked, although it is unclear as to which countries are adjacent to Tecala (a map shows that Tecala's southern border resembles the Ecuador-Peru border). Although the movie was mainly filmed in Ecuador. The producers wanted to film in Colombia, but due to the dangers that guerrillas pose in that country, the film location was moved to Ecuador. The big piles of money to pay for the rescue were, in fact, big piles of Sucres, the Ecuadorian national currency at the time of the filming.
Tecala also has oil wealth, and the U.S. hopes that oil exports will overtake cocaine as the primary industry there. The people of Tecala are known as the Tecalenos.

Critical reception

The film critics gave the film mixed reviews.
Critic Stephen Holden, who writes for ''The New York Times'', did not think the film worked well, opining that the actors did not connect. He wrote, "[the film displays] a gaping lack of emotional connection among the characters in a romantic triangle that feels conspicuously unromantic...what ultimately sinks this stylish but heartless film is a flat lead performance by the eternally snippy Meg Ryan...Ms. Ryan expresses no inner conflict, nor much of anything else beyond a mounting tension. Even when her wide blue eyes well up with tears, the pain she conveys is more the frustration of a little girl who has misplaced her doll than any deep, empathetic suffering."^[2]

Cast and ratings

★ Russell Crowe as Terry Thorne

★ Meg Ryan as Alice Bowman

★ David Morse as Peter Bowman

★ Pamela Reed as Janis Goodman

★ David Caruso as Dino

★ Anthony Heald as Ted Fellner

★ Stanley Anderson as Jerry

★ Gottfried John as Eric Kessler

★ Alun Armstrong as Wyatt

★ Michael Kitchen as Ian Havery

★ Margo Martindale as Ivy

★ Mario Ernesto Sánchez as Arturo Fernandez

★ Pietro Sibille as Juaco

★ Vicky Hernández as Maria

★ Flora Martínez as Norma

★ Diego Trujillo as Eliodoro

★ Aristóteles Picho as Sandro

★ Sarahi Echeverría as Cinta

★ Carlos Blanchard as Carlos

★ Raúl Rodríguez as Tomas

★ Mauro Cueva as Rico

Awards

'Nominations'

★ Blockbuster Entertainment Awards: Blockbuster Entertainment Award; Favorite Actor - Suspense, Russell Crowe; Favorite Actress - Suspense, Meg Ryan; Favorite Supporting Actor - Suspense, David Caruso; Favorite Supporting Actress - Suspense, Pamela Reed; Worst Movie ever made; 2001.

★ Satellite Awards: Golden Satellite Award; Best Original Score, Danny Elfman; 2001.

See also

★ Colombian Armed Conflict

Footnotes

1. .
2. Holden, Stephen. ''The New York Times'', film review, "Where Cynicism Rules, Integrity Can Be Heroic," December 8, 2000.

External links

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