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The film is based on a 1998 Vanity Fair article that takes a look at groups that are using kidnapping as a means to support their activities, be they political or otherwise. Of course, in order to be profitable you need to kidnap someone worthy- so usually big wig executives working for global companies in the developing world are targets. To combat this another industry has sprouted: K&R (kidnap and rescue), whose post Cold War specialists come from Interpol, military and CIA. Set in the fictitious South American country of Tecala (filmed in Ecuador), Alice's (Meg Ryan) husband Peter Bowman (David Morse) is working on building a dam financed by a Texas oil company. They've lived all over the world for his various jobs and are well off and idealists. Unbeknownst to them, the real reason for building the dam is to get cheap oil from this unstable place. Peter is kidnapped by guerrillas who long ago traded in any Marxist inclinations for the more profitable lure of money from the drug trade as well as kidnapping. Russell Crowe enters the picture as a kidnap and rescue man Terry Thorne, a former British army special services now working as a professional negotiator. Family ties are nonexistent to him and not with any sense of family in the real sense of the word. private company hired by by large conglomerates. When Peter's company drops the search for him (he's a mere engineer) and no assistance is offered by the embassy, Crowe returns to help Alice rescue Morse from his captors. Their relationship onscreen is not what moviegoers will expect after the media blitz this past year on their time together off screen. If you're hoping for a big Ryan-Crowe sex scene you're bound to be disappointed. As for the acting, there is certainly something to be said about less is more. Crowe, as usual, oozes his quiet strength, a mixture of both calm and vulnerability and is able to convey more by doing less. Ryan, after her performance in Hurly Burly shows she's better than the typical romantic comedy roles she's usually in, and works well with Crowe. David Morse is very capable as a kidnapped man, and Pamela Reed is entertaining as Morse's overbearing sister. The highlights are watching Crowe and Ryan in action as Crowe tries to negotiate Morse's release. They do work well together. When he finally heads to the jungle with David Caruso to rescue Morse, the action portion of the picture is well executed. The low points of the film are the simplistic portrayal of Latin Americans as either happy servants, corrupt leaders, or ineffectual guerrillas who smoke too much weed. There isn't anyone within the country worthy of their (Crowe's, Ryan's, or Morse's) trust. (To be sure, it's not as if the Texas oil people are regarded as particularly fair minded either.) And by making it an anonymous Latin American country, it's easier to get away with gross generalizations that do not have to be defended- instead breathtaking images of the jungles of Ecuador can mesmerize. This was surprising given Hackford's work on a film like Blood In Blood Out. I'm not trying to imply that there should have been a guerrilla with a heart of gold in the jungles, but a little more character development would have been nice. In the final analysis Proof of Life is certainly an intelligent movie that's well acted and offers a new look at our world, where the lines between friend and foe have drastically changed. The enemy is no longer a hated dictator or Soviet subsidized group. The kidnappers are using this new form of guerrilla warfare to gain leverage, and if they weren't doing it, the movie infers that that someone else, be whether from the military or government would be seizing the opportunity if they could get away with it. It's no longer about ideals (if it ever really was), but about opportunity.
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