Director: Peter Weir
Year Released: 1986
Rating: 2.5
Inventor with a God Complex (Harrison Ford) forces his family to pack up and travel with him to Central America where he has plans to build a giant ice machine - meanwhile, his doppelganger, a missionary with a God Complex (Andre Gregory) is converting the locals to Christianity. Interestingly, both do their part to corrupt the natives: Ford's machine blows up and contaminates the river; Gregory sells his people false hope and fake religion. This duality is compelling for a while, but it's also stretched a little too far: for one, Ford's character is a madman who thinks nothing of sacrificing lives for his dreams, and second, his wife (Helen Mirren) is an undeveloped character who lacks basic motherly instincts and doesn't give her husband much of a fight. River Phoenix is impressive as Ford and Mirren's oldest son, and every time I revisit one of his movies I wonder about what he would be working on today (which is the same thing I think about when I think of James Dean and, more recently, the late Heath Ledger).
