Review of The Mosquito Coast (1986) by Jedd Y — 26 Aug 2012

This was just a very, very good film. I've heard a lot about it, particularly that it didn't make a lot of money at the box office because audiences didn't want to see Harrison as a potentially-dangerous anti-hero instead of as the straight good guy people came to know and love the actor as.

It's really thought-provoking, and very well-shot. Peter Weir is a director whom I admire a lot and had earlier worked with Ford on "Witness", and would go on to direct films such as 'The Truman Show' and 'Master and Commander'.

In this film, Ford plays a radical, somewhat crazy inventor who is tired of what he perceives as overly-commercialised, lazy American culture and uproots his entire family, including his wife (Helen Mirren) and oldest son (River Phoenix) to a remote jungle location along the Mosquito Coast of the title.

There, he sets up his own town, building "civillisation" from scratch, but his extreme ideals push him to the edge and endanger his family, and he becomes blinded by his vision, ironic as that sounds.

This film proves Ford has range, he plays a wild-eyed, unstable man very well and all the while you still have a shred of sympathy for him even as he pushes the limit of what's acceptable for a father to do to his family over and over again.

The location filming in Belize is gorgeous and you truly get a sense that you're off the beaten track and far from the known world, as it seems. It's also one of the last film appearances of Butterfly McQueen aka Prissy from 'Gone With the Wind'.

I was watching the film with my mother and she said "hey, that sounds like the silly girl from Gone with the Wind" - and it was the same actress! Helen Mirren was great as usual as the hapless (and actually nameless) wife, pulled along for the insane adventure and loyal to her husband to a fault.

River Phoenix's performance was also stunning and it is a huge, huge pity that he passed away so early on; he could have had a very luminous career as he clearly was a talented actor.