Proof of Life (2000)

Alice hires a professional negotiator to obtain the release of her engineer husband, who has been kidnapped by anti-government guerrillas in South America.

Director:

Taylor Hackford

Writers:

Tony Gilroy, William Prochnau (article),

Stars:

Meg Ryan, Russell Crowe, David Morse

5 nominations.

Cast

Cast overview, first billed only:
Meg Ryan	...	Alice Bowman
Russell Crowe	...	Terry Thorne
David Morse	...	Peter Bowman
Pamela Reed	...	Janis Goodman
David Caruso	...	Dino
Anthony Heald	...	Ted Fellner
Stanley Anderson	...	Jerry
Gottfried John	...	Eric Kessler
Alun Armstrong	...	Wyatt
Michael Kitchen	...	Ian Havery
Margo Martindale	...	Ivy
Mario Ernesto Sánchez	...	Arturo Fernandez (as Mario Ernesto Sanchez)
Pietro Sibille	...	Juaco
Vicky Hernández	...	Maria (as Vicky Hernandez)
Norma Martínez	...	Norma (as Norma Martinez)

Storyline

In a mountainous South American country, drug-dealing rebels kidnap Peter Bowman, a US engineer who works for an oil company's subsidiary. The company calls in a negotiator, Terry Thorne, an Aussie ex-soldier based in London. When the subsidiary goes bankrupt, the oil company washes its hands of the matter and pulls Thorne. Bowman's wife Alice begs him to stay. She and Peter's sister cobble together some money, Thorne talks ransom terms with the cash-strapped rebels, and Peter, chained high in the mountains, is sustained by a photo of Alice. When the politics of the situation change, so must Thorne's strategy. And what can Alice and he do about the attraction growing between them?

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Plot Keywords:

negotiator | ransom | money | south america | insurance | 

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Genres:

Drama | Thriller

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Motion Picture Rating (MPAA)

Rated R for violence, language and some drug material

Details

Official Sites:

Warner Bros. (UK) Warner Bros. (US)

Country:

USA

Language:

English Spanish Russian Italian French

Release Date:

8 December 2000 (USA)

Also Known As:

Prueba de vida

Filming Locations:

Biedrusko, Poznan, Wielkopolskie, Poland

Box Office

Budget:

$65,000,000 (estimated)

Opening Weekend:

£762,614 (UK) (2 March 2001)

Gross:

ESP 418,713,174 (Spain) (29 June 2001)

Company Credits

Production Co:

Castle Rock Entertainment, Bel Air Entertainment, Anvil Films

Technical Specs

Runtime:

135 min

Sound Mix:

DTS Dolby Digital SDDS

Color:

Color (Technicolor)

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

During the scene at 1:40 into the movie when he says, "these guys are my Panama crew", you can see a piece of cardboard on the wall behind with "JUST CAUSE" written on it. Operation Just Cause was a U.S. invasion of Panama to capture Manuel Noriega, military leader and drug criminal - a storyline very similar to the movie's plot.

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Goofs

Alice slaps Thorne's left cheek, but when he walks in to the house, he is massaging his right cheek.

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Quotes

[first lines]
Terry Thorne: This is the conclusive ransom report for Mr. Pierre Lenoir. Location, Chechnya. Result, positive.

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Connections

Referenced in Law & Order: Special Victims Unit: Secrets (2001)

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Soundtracks

"Muñeca Linda"
Written by Christian Valencia and Alonso Alegria

User Reviews

Good actioner but what's with Meg's character?

According to the director's commentary on the DVD, Meg Ryan demanded (and got) significant rewrites to her character. Maybe Meg should stick to acting because her character is pretty unappealing. When her husband's humanitarian engineering project is unraveling and he's terribly upset, what does she do? She complains about their life traveling around the globe (a very curious scene because one of Meg's rewrites required her character to be rewritten from a country-club wife into a social activist), dredges up her miscarriage which she blames on her husband (apparently because it happened while they were both voluntarily in Africa working on aid projects), and essentially tells him to take her back to America. When he offers to do so, she reverses course and rejects the offer. After the husband is kidnapped, Meg (almost immediately) starts to fall for Russell Crowe though somewhat later she slaps HIM in the face when he's only trying to get her husband back. Finally, when the husband is rescued and returned to Meg, she looks about as thrilled as someone presented with a stinking fish. Yikes! We should be happy at movie's end but I couldn't stop from thinking that the rescued kidnapee had gone from the frying pan into the fire.