Very Cool!!!

one of my absolute favorites!

The movie is wonderful and true, an act of love in all its contradictions and complexity

This is a dark and sometimes deeply uncomfortable drama

Believe this, I have watched this so many times, but in part. I could spout off lines in Christopher Hampton's script, at the click of a finger. I love the settings for this movie in which Gere, an English spoken doctor, falls for a newly married young woman, Clara (Elpidia Carrillo) who is earlier seen as the whore working at this seedy bar that doubles as a cat house. She's married to the honorary Consul (Caine) unaware of the affair that has sparked between friend and wife. At the start, Gere, just arriving in town, helps another guy escort a drunk Caine from one bar to infamous cat house one. It's here he sets eyes on Clara. The sex scenes are quite hot as passions run high, but Gere has trouble from the other side, involving his past, where two old friends, (one a much younger Joquian Almedia) approach him, with a kidnapping plot to snatch a consul, in return for their fellow South American prisoners to be released. Only problem is, they snatch Caine instead, not a real consul, an honorary consul. Gere, maddened by the idiocy of the mates, remains loyal. Gere's father too, is one of those prisoners, as Gere is innocently led to believe. Caine's actor mate, Bob Hoskins, plays a cop, trying to help Gere track down his old man. One scene has Gere going off at him, when they arrest 250 mentally unsound people under his care and put them temporarily in prison, but Hoskins mellows him. Gere's fate at the end of the this, where the strong arm of the law closes in, was tragic, I must say. His not so badly portrayed doctor, is a sympathetic, goodhearted and likable character. But the heavyweights are Caine, who plays drunk so good and being funny too about it, where no nonsense Hoskins is solid. Elpidia is just pretty scenery really. But really there's something too brief about whole affair of the story here, despite it's good screenplay, and really it's just a passable, but involving drama + those couple of sex scenes. And near it's end too, some of the scenes are quite dark, they disjoint the action. But Gere too is a bit of a bastard in the bedroom, paying the now married Clara cash for her services as if she was still working. Also when going up to Gere's apartment, is her first tome, riding in an elevator. I liked the way Gere wore his jealousy well too, really at the sheer fact, Caine loves her. There's a lot of good scenes to find in the movie and Paul's McCartney's Brazilian intro theme was just beautiful and melodic, as it was soothing. For Gere fans, do put this different and quite enjoyable one one on your list.

This is an average pot-boiler from the Graham Greene novel, and although it was better than I originally remembered when watching it again recently, it certainly isn't at all memorable. That said, there are some welcome production values and the cast are worth watching. It's essentially a Richard Gere vehicle - at least in terms of the American market, and he plays an English-born Paraguayan called Dr Eduardo Plarr. Gere is an intriguing actor, or at least certainly was in the eighties. Bear in mind this performance came just a year on from his breakthrough role in An Officer And A Gentleman and you can still see the raw, almost nervous tension in his execution, and he certainly favours the minimalist approach. It's almost as if he's determined to become more than the beefcake Hollywood obviously wants him to be. Despite this assumption, however, Gere still has the obligatory love making scenes although I'm convinced when he first beds Elpidia Carrillo's character Clara, his helpful grunts are way out of sync with his theatrical pelvic thrusts. If Gere does seem to be a little uncomfortable in front of camera, then it's probably because in most scenes (the bedroom ones aside of course) he is either facing Michael Caine or Bob Hoskins. In his position, I think I would have stayed as quiet as possible, and it must have been a daunting scenario for the then 34 year old just fresh from box office success. His accent as well is all over the place. At times there is a distinct English twang to it, but then it slips into Amercian and even flirts with South American when faced with scenes with the locals. Bob Hoskins, of course, shows everyone how it should be done. Hoskins has never been afraid to take on any accent, and here he is the local chief of police, with successful results. Some critics have said that Hoskins was miscast in this film, but I strongly disagree. His demeanour throughout and the convincing accent I think contribute to an all round excellent pitch, although this is probably helped by the comfort of teaming up with director John Mackenzie again, just four years on from The Long Good Friday. The reason I think that Hoskins is so convincing here is that as he is, in physical terms, not the tallest actor on screen, he nevertheless carries weight because of his position and the corruptibility it potentially brings with it. And then there is Michael Caine. Yet again, Caine is playing a drunk, whose only passion in life seems to be the whisky bottle. As already explained earlier, Caine's legendary depiction of 'drunks' was peerless in the eighties. As an exercise in this very matter, I looked into how many 'drunk' roles he has played, and counted post-Zulu, no less than seven (I am counting Last Orders as many of the scenes were set at closing time in a pub). The best scene in this entire movie comes when Caine is at the wheel of his car whilst the US Ambassador (George Belanger) has stopped to take in the local scenic backdrops. He looks up aghast when spotting Caine sipping from a hip flask. Realising he has been rumbled, Caine swiftly raises a coke bottle to his lips within seconds, expertly switching beverages in the same take and without a blip. Ironically, this scene also has great resonance regarding the second part of the movie. I think the film is also pitched right at 102 minutes. Any longer and the plot would have become drawn out and the audience would fidget. Not a classic then, but a decent enough attempt by all concerned.

There's a solid film here lurking about but it never quite surfaces. It's based on a Graham Greene novel (that I haven't read) and it deals with an English/Paraguayan doctor, Eduardo Plarr, (Gere) who gets involved in a conspiracy to kidnap an American Ambassador in Argentina. However a mix-up occurs and the rebels accidentally kidnap a (somewhat worthless) British Honarary Consul, Charley Fortnum, (Caine) who's a friend of the good doctor. Then there's also the fact that Plarr is having an affair with Fortnum's wife.This is probably meant to be a morality tale about loyalty and the price you pay for truly believing in something. At times this looks like quite a fascinating film. It deals (in parts) with freedom fighters who are badly treated by inhuman officials and shows some truly harrowing scenes of torture and human humiliation.Then there are some truly humane segments involving Fortnum's relationship with his ex-prostitute wife. A man whose life is nothing to brag about, Fortnum never-the-less truly loves a scarred individual with all his heart and accepts whatever pleasure he can muster out of his existence. A heavy drinker (and an embarrassment to his fellow countrymen), it becomes clear how worthless he's truly perceived when no attempt is made to rescue his life when he's accidentally captured by Paraguyan rebels.It's here that Plarr is meant to be given a greater character feature than previously displayed as he seems to be the only one who actually appreciates Fortnum for the good (but somewhat flawed) person he is. The problem lies in the fact that Gere's performance (and his character) is beyond redemption by that point and his actions in the final third are wholly unbelievable and un-characteristic. His ultimate sacrifice in the end doesn't ring true and therefore doesn't have the intended impact as I'm guessing the highly praised novel does.But to be fair to Gere; he's miserably miscast here. Fresh from his stint (and an impeccable performance) in "Breathless", he maybe wanted to try out more serious material and therefore chose this project. His performance here isn't any good, his British accent comes and goes at a whim and he still looks like Julian Kay (his character from "American Gigolo") only posing as a doctor in a foreign country. His presence in the film is it's real downfall. A big indicator of this is how the film was advertised as a sexy Gere feature (with pointless graphic sex scenes) and stupidly retitled as "Beyond the Limit" to hide it's true dramatic origins and promote is as a thriller; which it really isn't.But still; "The Honorary Consul" does have it's quiet moments. Michael Caine gives a terrific performance in the title role and his character is very human, tragic and earnest. He's flawed (and who isn't?) but he's got a good sense of what really counts and Caine's performance is the reason why this film isn't a failure. The scenes where Fortnum discusses his wife with Plarr, his reasons for taking her as his wife and, at the end, his reasons for wanting the baby which isn't even his, are the film's strong points and I don't even think that's what director John McKenzie was going for; it just happened with a great performance and a solid core material.In the end; "The Honorary Consul" goes down as a disappointment but a somewhat fascinating one as it could have been really good.

It was difficult to watch this film because of the miscasting of Richard Gere who seems at last partially anesthesthetized through the entire movie. There is not one bit of passion in his manner or his speech and, whenever he is on the screen, there is a hole through which all tension drains. Bob Hoskins is not a convincing Latin at all, neither in accent nor in manner. Better casting in these two parts would have improved this film immeasurably.An interesting, semi-error shows many of the main characters sweating through their shirts. In tropic and sub-tropic regions, locals have heat adapted well enough so that they sweat almost unnoticeably in normal conditions and thus can appear crisp and unruffled in temperatures where those of us from more temperate climates sweat like water buffalo.