There's a classic film here that's so close to existing you can almost reach out and touch it. The script, the setting, the atmosphere and even the poster and theme tune are all on point. The direction and photography are both solid and workmanlike.
Where it all falls down is the casting: Richard Gere looks every inch a star, but the accent is strained and a distraction throughout, and he cannot convey an emotion to save his life. Michael Caine is well-cast but barely even turns up, and just coasts through the whole thing. Elpidia Carrillo, as Caine's wife Clara, is, like Gere, nice to look at but emotionally flat, and we never get to understand what she wants or feels. Worst of all is Bob Hoskins, whose accent as an Argentinian police chief has taken on Dick Van Dyke-like legendary status, most of the time sounding exactly like a London cabbie giving an impersonation of a Chicago gangster he saw in a movie once. Never let that man do an accent.
All these things cripple the story and it's really not possible to ignore them at any point, so the film flounders and fails. And yet, the whole way through, you can feel what it could have been, walking beside it like a ghost.
Where it all falls down is the casting: Richard Gere looks every inch a star, but the accent is strained and a distraction throughout, and he cannot convey an emotion to save his life. Michael Caine is well-cast but barely even turns up, and just coasts through the whole thing. Elpidia Carrillo, as Caine's wife Clara, is, like Gere, nice to look at but emotionally flat, and we never get to understand what she wants or feels. Worst of all is Bob Hoskins, whose accent as an Argentinian police chief has taken on Dick Van Dyke-like legendary status, most of the time sounding exactly like a London cabbie giving an impersonation of a Chicago gangster he saw in a movie once. Never let that man do an accent.
All these things cripple the story and it's really not possible to ignore them at any point, so the film flounders and fails. And yet, the whole way through, you can feel what it could have been, walking beside it like a ghost.