Better Than Tabloid Tattle

By RICHARD CORLISS

This one came in with a funny smell: the perfume of illicit passion, domestic upheaval and smoldering guilt. (O.K., forget that last bit; we're in the postguilt age, at least in Hollywood and Washington.) Proof of Life, a romantic thriller with Meg Ryan and Russell Crowe, is coming out in the wake of the two stars' affair and the fracturing of Ryan's marriage to Dennis Quaid. The all-American blond is now a Jezebel, her cuddlings with Crowe sprayed across gossip-mag covers and on tabloid-tale TV shows. The eventual film looked destined to be remembered as Exhibit A in the trial of adulterous love.

So the first thing to say about Proof of Life is that it makes the problems of three show people seem less important than the drama of three compelling characters on a big movie screen. Inspired by a Vanity Fair article about a U.S. businessman kidnapped in Colombia, Tony Gilroy's script imagines that engineer Peter Bowman (the excellent David Morse) is seized by terrorist rebels, taken to an Andean prison aerie and held for a $3 million ransom. His wife Alice (Ryan) finds that Peter's company will not pay for the services of Terry Thorne (Crowe), an expert negotiator; she must hope Terry takes the job pro bono. Even if he does, he'll have to juggle the demands of Alice, the guerrillas and his own bruised but open heart.

Under the commando-efficient direction of Taylor Hackford (The Devil's Advocate), the film intelligently deploys familiar thriller elements: chases; shoot-outs; high-level duplicity; terse, sassy dialogue; and a cast having a high time playing preening villains and wily good guys. Even Ryan, with too much attitude and nonstop nutating, finally gets into the film's burly spirit. All this is enough to stoke the action engine, but the movie has a fuller agenda--to give its characters flesh and a meaningful melancholy.

The film's first big set piece is, surprise, all talk. Peter and Alice have one of those marital arguments--a wrangle about career frustration, principles and office politics, money and kids--found all too often in life and almost never in movies. He's had a bad day, she's not sufficiently sympathetic, and the tension escalates like Bolero, stopping just short of a declaration of war. Soon after, Peter is abducted. In most movies, someone who is to be killed or imperiled gets a soppy farewell scene. This jarring confrontation gives Proof of Life another reason to bring Peter back alive--so he and Alice can forgive each other.

Terry is a more standard-issue hero--strong, smart and caring--but Crowe gives him the burden of a wise realist. His hard-earned awareness of the world's wicked ways presses down on his sturdy shoulders and at the corners of his sensitive lips. Crowe displayed this moral weight in The Insider and Gladiator; it makes him the thinking man's grunt, and it grounds his can-this-be-love scene with Ryan. "Just tell me you know how much you mean to me," she says dewily. His reply shows a tough man's brusque vulnerability: "Then we're even."

Yes, it's the old Casablanca triangle: an idealist, his conflicted wife and the adventurer who can save a life by breaking a heart. Proof of Life isn't quite at that level of romantic melodrama, but its wit, vigor and rue make it a superior entertainment--and a lot more illuminating than the real-life romance it sparked.

--By Richard Corliss