Review of The Mosquito Coast (1986) by Stuart K — 23 Apr 2012

After making Witness (1985), Peter Weir was now Hollywood's new golden boy, and he'd wanted to make this film after The Year of Living Dangerously (1982) but couldn't get the funding, but with his star from Witness on board, it got made and it's an odd but engaging drama that comes across as the best film Werner Herzog never made.

Based on the novel by Paul Theroux, this tells the story of Allie Fox (Harrison Ford), a Harvard drop-out who is a brilliant inventor who has created the ability to make ice of fire with a complex machine using chemicals.

Allie is sick of America giving in to Japanese consumerism, so he and his family, which include his wife 'Mother' (Helen Mirren) his sons Charlie (River Phoenix), Jerry (Jadrien Steele) and daughters April (Hilary Gordon) and Clover (Rebecca Gordon) leave America for a new life in Belize, and he makes his new home in a remote village right in the middle of the rainforest by a river, it's here that Allie Fox, along with the locals build a huge community with a giant version of his ice machine making ice for the tribes, but things go awry when bandits commandeer their community.

It's certainly a different kind of film, and it has Fitzcarraldo's fingerprints all over it, (you could imagine Herzog and Kinski doing this), but Ford plays against type as the eccentric inventor and turns in a brilliant, tragic performance.

An underrated film from Weir, who knows how to create atmosphere.