I love this movie so much

Overrated and overhyped

Good story, Not enough for a whole film

It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

solitude of a man. his family as his victim. a character who reminds Lope de Aguirre or Brian Fitzgerald. in different tone. maybe, because the story is real and Harrison is far to be Klaus Kinski. a film about obsession, fear and madness.crumbs from flower power movement, extraordinary images, good performances and admirable illustration of man 's fragility, force and hope. a powerful film , beautiful for its profound thrill, one of interesting roles for Conrad Roberts and good occasion for remember the art of young River Phoenix. a film about duty. and its roots. a must see. for the landscapes and for images. for the story and for the acting. for the metamorphose of a man. for the struggle of his family. for the vain search of purity. for the links between father and sons.

A tale of an eccentric genius with an equally eccentric dream and his desire to escape a supposedly doomed America with his family to form a retro civilization in the tropics. It's difficult to like Harrison Ford (Allie)-especially in the last third of this movie when he starts really going off the deep end. But it is unique and really illustrates the mindset of an eccentric genius character well. If you are a middle-of-the-road (perhaps slightly Democratic) person with a 9-5 job-you know...the kind that the doomsayers claim has not "woke up" to what is going on, then you won't get it. You won't like it at all either. But art is not about being liked and often it is not even about passing judgment. Art is about illustrating the phenomenon of what it is to be human-without using crayons.

There's a touch of John Galt about Harrison Ford's protagonist in 'The Mosquito Coast': a brilliant, welfare-hating, atheistic inventor who retires from a civilised world full of moochers and looters and consequently doomed to collapse. He (and the film) also seem to share Ayn Rand's view of a world not occupied by Europeans as a virgin territory. Yet the film shifts from portraying him as a Randian hero to something rather less attractive; and odd moments towards the end reminded me of Andrey Zvyagintsev's superb 'The Return', albeit without the subtlety. Subtlety is really the key here: the film needs to show how the character's final descent is a natural consequence of his worldview, not some random madness; but Harrison Ford lacks the depth as an actor to pull this off. A young Helen Mirren co-stars, but the film is fundamentally all about Ford, and he can't fully convey the darkness of the man. It's a shame: there's a good (although somewhat fabulous) parable in the underlying storyline.

This really isn't so bad, but it feels like a case of wasted potential. As a Herzogian journey of a self-righteous madman dragging down everyone who cares about him by his own hubris, it doesn't go quite far enough and seems watered down. It could be Weir's direction or it could be his own choices, but Ford appears to be holding back without really exploring the darkness of the character. Mirren has little to do, and Gregory is stuck in a lame caricature. The film flirts with some compelling themes but always seems to veer off into adventure mode when things start getting real. Still, the plot elements are solid and one's interest in the various situations is maintained. The music and cinematography are quite fine. I'm generally underwhelmed by Weir's post-70's work, but this is one of the better ones. It's too bad it doesn't have a little more ambition to it.