solitude of a man. his family as his victim. a character who reminds Lope de Aguirre or Brian Fitzgerald. in different tone. maybe, because the story is real and Harrison is far to be Klaus Kinski. a film about obsession, fear and madness.crumbs from flower power movement, extraordinary images, good performances and admirable illustration of man 's fragility, force and hope. a powerful film , beautiful for its profound thrill, one of interesting roles for Conrad Roberts and good occasion for remember the art of young River Phoenix. a film about duty. and its roots. a must see. for the landscapes and for images. for the story and for the acting. for the metamorphose of a man. for the struggle of his family. for the vain search of purity. for the links between father and sons.

The Mosquito Coast is about a man following his convictions above all even to the detriment of his family. Harrison Ford is the man here playing an egotistical and iconoclastic inventor who takes his wife Helen Mirren and the four kids to Belize to set up his own idea of Utopia to escape the impending holocaust he sees as imminent.If Harrison Ford indeed says this was his favorite role I think I know why. It is certainly one that is challenging in that in addition to ego and self righteousness you have to have a certain amount of charisma to hold even your family to you. Otherwise Helen Mirren would have taken maybe the first two kids and left him flat. Ford's world leaves no room for dissent.Ford literally buys an abandoned town and makes himself mayor and builds an ice machine. In Belize this is something new and strange to the natives there. For a while Ford is held in wonder, but like with all Utopian schemes things go terribly wrong.Ford's great antagonist is missionary Andre Gregory. Ford has a great old time mocking Gregory's religion, but as it turns out in the end Gregory has a far greater understanding of the surroundings he's in than Ford could ever aspire to. Watching The Mosquito Coast I was thinking of Jean Jacques Rousseau and his ideas of the 'noble savage' which Ford has swallowed uncritically. What would Rousseau do if he was set down in modern Belize?Gregory also has a daughter played by Martha Plimpton and she awakens in his oldest son River Phoenix certain feelings that Ford for all his wisdom never discussed with his pubescent son. River is the first voice of dissent in the absolute monarchy that Ford rules over.In real life River Phoenix and Martha Plimpton were an item for a bit. Later on she was paired off on the screen with River in Running On Empty.This film and Running On Empty are both about a parent living an iconoclastic life and the affect it has on the family. River Phoenix's own family life, the communal living style they had probably gave him a wealth of experience to draw from. Although as he was quick to point out his family weren't fugitives from the law as they were in Running On Empty.Ford's dissent in total madness is something to see. I wonder if that would have happened to Rousseau.

PLOT IN A NUTSHELL: Allie Fox (Harrison Ford), an eccentric intellectual, engineer and inventor, is very unhappy with how life in America is going. In fact, he hates it so much that he uproots his family from their nice little home in the middle of anywhere is America to a jungle where he proceeds to build his own idealized utopia, complete with a giant ice maker he calls "Fat Boy". For a brief time the restless Fox is happy and content, but his utopia is doomed to fail, leading to death, destruction, despair, and ruin. At the time it was released in 1986 director Peter Weir's "The Mosquito Coast" (based on the novel of the same name) got an at best mixed critical response and was a box office failure. Some believed it was because the film just wasn't "box office" material for the average American audience. Most however believed that the film failed due to the presence of Harrison Ford as Allie Fox - a role that, not surprisingly, had been offered to Jack Nicholson before Ford signed on. In the big scheme of the Hollywood game Ford built his career on playing sarcastic yet affable action heroes in big adventure films and thrillers, and by that point he had cemented his place as a pop culture icon with not one but two such roles - lovable rogue Han Solo from Star Wars and rugged archaeologist Indiana Jones. Ford had had some trouble gaining recognition for dramatic roles and had only just recently won praise for his role as a cop on the run in 1985's "Witness" also directed by Peter Weir (as of this writing "Witness" is still the only film where Ford was nominated for a Best Actor Oscar), and was looking for something different when "The Mosquito Coast" came his way. Its' easy to see what drew Ford to the part - Allie Fox was about as far removed from his two most iconic roles - and regular parts - as any part could be, and he was such an unusual, offbeat character, the kind that come along once in a lifetime, that it was simply too good to pass up (Ford has even confessed that he agreed with at least some of the character's criticisms about Americans not working hard enough and selling out their values). And therein lay the danger - after years of watching Ford save the day, either from Nazis or an evil intergalactic Empire, audiences just weren't ready to see him playing such an unsympathetic character. Which is too bad since this is quite possibly Ford's most dynamic performance, and certainly deserving of an Oscar nomination (Lord knows that lesser actors have won Oscars for lesser performances in lesser films). Ford embraces the unapologetic, self-destructive nature of the always critical Allie Fox with an unabashed go for broke energy that keeps the film charged from start to finish, and he is surrounded by an excellent cast, including the late River Phoenix as his oldest son (Phoenix later played the young version of Ford in 1989's "Indiana Jones & The Last Crusade"). Despite the terrible things Fox does in the name of his dream, even after that dream has obviously failed, Ford finds a way to make you feel sorry for him. "The Mosquito Coast" is a fascinating examination of how far a man will go to achieve his goal, as strange as that goal is, and a clash of ideologies (as seen in Fox clashing with the Reverend) and the ever fragile nature of family. It is not an easy film to watch, not the kind of film you'd want to watch after a long hard day at work, but it is a beautifully shot, fascinating film, and a unique experience for Harrison Ford fans.

This really isn't so bad, but it feels like a case of wasted potential. As a Herzogian journey of a self-righteous madman dragging down everyone who cares about him by his own hubris, it doesn't go quite far enough and seems watered down. It could be Weir's direction or it could be his own choices, but Ford appears to be holding back without really exploring the darkness of the character. Mirren has little to do, and Gregory is stuck in a lame caricature. The film flirts with some compelling themes but always seems to veer off into adventure mode when things start getting real. Still, the plot elements are solid and one's interest in the various situations is maintained. The music and cinematography are quite fine. I'm generally underwhelmed by Weir's post-70's work, but this is one of the better ones. It's too bad it doesn't have a little more ambition to it.