October 10, 1999 -- Harrison Ford, a very likeable person, has chosen his second straight bad script, following the pedestrian "6 Days, 7 Nights." The screenplay and dialogue never seem to get off the ground in this movie that is loaded with awkward moments. I was very disappointed in this movie, because the trailer made it look like it was going to be interesting. It isn't.

Ford, who plays "Dutch" Van Den Broeck, an internal affairs investigator in the New York Police Department, finds out his wife was killed in a plane crash, a plane she was not supposed to have been on. He suspects she was having an affair. He finds out she was sitting next to the husband of Kay Chandler (Kristin Scott Thomas of "The English Patient") who was also not supposed to have been on that plane. Kay Chandler is running for Congress and wants no hint of the affair to get out.

Dutch is obsessed with finding out all he can about the affair. He is amazed and hurt his wife was able to fool him so well. Chandler is in a state of denial, she wants to put the affair behind her, but Dutch is relentless. His personal problems spill over into his work and he becomes erratic.

Chandler seems a little too aloof and she is certainly not believable as a resident of New Hampshire. Her dialogue is annoying in that every time she is asked a question, she answers it with another question. The screenplay, by Darryl Ponicsan, based on the novel by Warren Adler, also has Dutch doing the same thing. When you have so many questions asked in a film and nearly all of them are answered by questions, there seems to be no communication going on. Every time something gets going between he two, there's a subplot to derail everything.

Despite these handicaps, I liked the performances of Ford and Scott Thomas. Her character was certainly more interesting than the character she played in "The English Patient," where she was simply a body swayed by passions. Here, she plays a stronger character, who considers her options and maintains control of her situation. The director Sydney Pollack, also plays a campaign advisor in the movie. Nevertheless, the actors can't save this turkey.

The way I thought this film was going to go was that Ford was going to be investigating the accident as part of his work and it turned out someone blew up the plane on purpose. That way Dutch and Chandler would have a common interest in finding out what happened. Oh well, maybe next time. This film rates a D.

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