The hero is a character of substance -- or better, to avoid confusion, to say he is a "character" and not a "hero." Or to pursue the distinction: everything that happens in the story, not just the outcome, is a direct consequence of who and what he is: a Rube Goldberg inventor ("nine patents, six pending") and an autocratic patriarch who sees America going to the dogs, or at best to the Japanese, and sooner or later to nuclear war. These and other signs of decay are adduced in a rapid-fire sequence of semi-comic monologues and duologues, but too hackneyed and cranky to be anywhere near funny, as the motivation to leave the country (and the dirty dishes in the sink) and to drag the family to tropical Belize, where our hero -- oops, "character" -- promptly buys an inland town called Geronimo, soon to be transformed into a thriving agrarian independency, and dominated by a towering tin monstrosity called "fat boy," to dispense ice and air conditioning. Quite a sight, that -- and one of the rare compelling reasons, by virtue of size alone, to force director Peter Weir to step back for a moment or two from his gnat-like closeups of people's faces, necks, shirt collars, hats. The story comes from a novel by Paul Theroux, whose previous bequests to the screen (Saint Jack, Half Moon Street) tended to call to mind Graham Greene. This one, though much of the time it lowers the mind to Swiss Family Robinson and Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House, at least for a short while raises it all the way to Joseph Conrad. For the longer while there is simply too little friction offered against the central character from those around him, and none at all from his four faceless children plus faceless wife. Actually River Phoenix as the eldest and Helen Mirren as the wife do have faces suggesting something might be going on inside -- but what would that be? This degree of undercharacterization goes far beyond what might be excused in context as their passiveness under a tyrant, and indicates some passiveness on the part of the director, too. With Harrison Ford. (1986) — Duncan Shepherd