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Theatrical Release Information
Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com
Dustin Hoffman plays a lowlife who happens upon a plane crash and rescues the passengers, but doesn't really care about the value of his deed or the attendant publicity when the media starts searching for the hero. Another fellow (Andy Garcia) steps into the gap and claims credit, and as his life changes for the better he takes on a messianic glow. Geena Davis is the cynical television reporter who pushes the latter's fame in order to keep her story alive, and this film, directed by Stephen Frears (Prick Up Your Ears), takes a few familiar jabs at a manipulative and voyeuristic press. This is essentially an unofficial remake of Meet John Doe, though it is less dramatic and forceful in the end than Frank Capra's classic. Chevy Chase has an oddly anachronistic part as Davis's editor (maybe he thought he really was in Meet John Doe), but the film belongs to Hoffman, who makes his character a slightly cleaned-up version of the actor's own Ratso Rizzo in Midnight Cowboy. --Tom Keogh
From The New Yorker
Stephen Frears' new movie often feels like a remake of something from the thirties or the forties. Its plot premise-an ordinary man is lionized by the media for a courageous act he didn't perform, and the actual hero can't get anyone to see the truth-provides the sort of material that Preston Sturges and Frank Capra liked to work with. And the script, an original by David Webb Peoples (
Dustin Hoffman plays a lowlife who happens upon a plane crash and rescues the passengers, but doesn't really care about the value of his deed or the attendant publicity when the media starts searching for the hero. Another fellow (Andy Garcia) steps into the gap and claims credit, and as his life changes for the better he takes on a messianic glow. Geena Davis is the cynical television reporter who pushes the latter's fame in order to keep her story alive, and this film, directed by Stephen Frears (Prick Up Your Ears), takes a few familiar jabs at a manipulative and voyeuristic press. This is essentially an unofficial remake of Meet John Doe, though it is less dramatic and forceful in the end than Frank Capra's classic. Chevy Chase has an oddly anachronistic part as Davis's editor (maybe he thought he really was in Meet John Doe), but the film belongs to Hoffman, who makes his character a slightly cleaned-up version of the actor's own Ratso Rizzo in Midnight Cowboy. --Tom Keogh
From The New Yorker
Stephen Frears' new movie often feels like a remake of something from the thirties or the forties. Its plot premise-an ordinary man is lionized by the media for a courageous act he didn't perform, and the actual hero can't get anyone to see the truth-provides the sort of material that Preston Sturges and Frank Capra liked to work with. And the script, an original by David Webb Peoples (