Many people will be fooled by the high caliber actors and director involved in this project into thinking they are watching some type of grand love story, when really they are just being bored by a one-note idea and some really undramatic goings on. Dutch Van Den Broeck (Ford) and Kay Chandler (Thomas) are brought together when their spouses are killed in a plane crash while stealing away to Miami for an adulterous tryst. As Dutch, a DC internal affairs investigator, and Kay, a Republican congresswoman, try to sort through this terrible loss and this terrible revelation, they fall in love, sort of. Problem is their romance (i) is slow to start (they don't even meet until well into the movie), (ii) unconvincingly shifts in intensity, and (iii) then sort of flips around uncomfortably like a dying fish out of water.

      There's meant to be something more going on here. The film is trying to raise issues about monogamy, honesty, and trust. Possibly the only interesting moment in the film is when Dutch's wife's coworker at Saks reveals her unusual reaction to her own husband's affair. But thematic ambitions aside, the story here is just unforgivably lame. How much do we really care, and how high do the stakes really seem in this post-Lewinsky era, that Kay's reelection campaign may be compromised because she is seen with another man, after the death of her husband? And Dutch is constantly trying to dig deeper to find out the fact of his and Kay's spouse's affair-- but they are both dead, so who really cares what hotel they stayed in or if they had a secret love nest?

      As for the performances, I guess they are okay, given the material. I will say that Harrison Ford convinced me of his major star wattage in this role-- it wasn't until about three quarters through the film that I realized how annoying his character really is, constipated with jealousy and just generally cranky and unpleasant. You know you are a movie star when you can make a guy like Dutch sympathetic. Thomas makes a good effort, but even she can't deliver some of her silly lines convincingly. In one painfully awkward scene, she admits on Dutch's answering machine that she misses certain aspects of her relationship with Dutch, before they've even been shown to have much of one. In fact, because their relationship is so odd and so shoddily developed, it occurred to me that this movie wasn't so much about two people in love as two people who are just really horny for each other. I think that would have been a fine premise for the movie, but with a title like Random Hearts, a sickeningly heavy-handed score, and some really embarrassing romance novel dialogue, I don't think it was the filmmakers' desired intent.

      As for the supporting players, the director Sydney Pollack, who never disappoints when he is in front of the camera, provides some spark with his protrayal as Kay's campaign consultant. Charles Dutton is Dutch's partner, a fine actor unfortunately trapped in a terribly uninteresting subplot involving a crooked cop. Bonnie Hunt plays Kay's best friend who gets to drop a bombshell late in the film. But perhaps nothing can sum up my feelings about Random Hearts better than to say that when this particular bombshell was dropped, I could not have possibly cared less.

Eric Lanyard, 1999