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The Lost City (2022)
Take the 1984 Robert Zemeckis film Romancing the Stone and mix in equal portions of The African Queen and Jungle Cruise and you have an epic action adventure called The Lost City that gets off a to a great start, but definitely begins to runs out of gas during its final act before moving very slowly to its satisfying conclusion.
The 2022 film stars Oscar winner Sandra Bullock as a spinsterish romance novelist named Loretta Sage who is on a book tour with Alan (Channing Tatum) the cover model for the main character in all of her novels. Loretta is kidnapped by an eccentric millionaire (Daniel Radcliffe) who thinks something Loretta included her latest novel could lead him to a treasure if he could get Loretta to translate it for him. It's clear that Alan and Loretta have feelings for each other that have been buried for years, so when Loretta disappears, Alan hires an old buddy and adventurer named Jack Trainer (Oscar winner Brad Pitt, in a dazzling cameo) to rescue Loretta for him, but that doesn't quite work out and eventually Alan has to step up and save Loretta himself.
The film initially comes off as a remake of Romancing the Stone. As a matter of fact, early on we get a glance of a hotel lobby with a large painting on the wall that says "Romancing the Pen", but there's a big difference with one of the central characters in this story. Michael Douglas' Jack Colton in Romancing the Stone is a genuine reincarnation of one of the characters in the books of Joan Wilder (Kathleen Turner). In this film, Alan is the just the physical embodiment of Loretta's character, Dash. On the inside, Alan is a bubbling cauldron of neuroses and phobias, that come immediately to surface whenever Alan faces anything resembling discomfort or danger, and it's this character that gives this film the dash of originality it has.
It was refreshingly realistic to learn that the Alan character is kind of a wimp, but even more refreshing than that is the fact that Alan is fully aware of it and doesn't care what anyone thinks. Once he realizes what kind of danger Loretta is in, he realizes the kind of help she needs and she knows it's not him. The funniest scenes in the film are when Pitt's Trainer is doing what he has to do to save Loretta and the utterly clumsy Alan keeps getting in his way.
Of course, eventually it's up to Alan to save the day and when that does come to fruition, the film starts to run off gas and runs much longer than it needs to, sagging in the middle but snapping back for a terrific ending. Bullock nicely underplays as the tightly wound Loretta and Daniel Radcliffe works very hard in a role that was clearly written for Peter Dinklage. Da'Vine Joy Randolph, Hector Anibal, and Oscar Nunez also make the most of supporting roles, but if the truth be told, Channing Tatum quietly walks off with this movie with his beautifully internalized performance as the outward cowardly Alan who steps up when he has to. Tatum alone makes this film worth sitting through.
Take the 1984 Robert Zemeckis film Romancing the Stone and mix in equal portions of The African Queen and Jungle Cruise and you have an epic action adventure called The Lost City that gets off a to a great start, but definitely begins to runs out of gas during its final act before moving very slowly to its satisfying conclusion.
The 2022 film stars Oscar winner Sandra Bullock as a spinsterish romance novelist named Loretta Sage who is on a book tour with Alan (Channing Tatum) the cover model for the main character in all of her novels. Loretta is kidnapped by an eccentric millionaire (Daniel Radcliffe) who thinks something Loretta included her latest novel could lead him to a treasure if he could get Loretta to translate it for him. It's clear that Alan and Loretta have feelings for each other that have been buried for years, so when Loretta disappears, Alan hires an old buddy and adventurer named Jack Trainer (Oscar winner Brad Pitt, in a dazzling cameo) to rescue Loretta for him, but that doesn't quite work out and eventually Alan has to step up and save Loretta himself.
The film initially comes off as a remake of Romancing the Stone. As a matter of fact, early on we get a glance of a hotel lobby with a large painting on the wall that says "Romancing the Pen", but there's a big difference with one of the central characters in this story. Michael Douglas' Jack Colton in Romancing the Stone is a genuine reincarnation of one of the characters in the books of Joan Wilder (Kathleen Turner). In this film, Alan is the just the physical embodiment of Loretta's character, Dash. On the inside, Alan is a bubbling cauldron of neuroses and phobias, that come immediately to surface whenever Alan faces anything resembling discomfort or danger, and it's this character that gives this film the dash of originality it has.
It was refreshingly realistic to learn that the Alan character is kind of a wimp, but even more refreshing than that is the fact that Alan is fully aware of it and doesn't care what anyone thinks. Once he realizes what kind of danger Loretta is in, he realizes the kind of help she needs and she knows it's not him. The funniest scenes in the film are when Pitt's Trainer is doing what he has to do to save Loretta and the utterly clumsy Alan keeps getting in his way.
Of course, eventually it's up to Alan to save the day and when that does come to fruition, the film starts to run off gas and runs much longer than it needs to, sagging in the middle but snapping back for a terrific ending. Bullock nicely underplays as the tightly wound Loretta and Daniel Radcliffe works very hard in a role that was clearly written for Peter Dinklage. Da'Vine Joy Randolph, Hector Anibal, and Oscar Nunez also make the most of supporting roles, but if the truth be told, Channing Tatum quietly walks off with this movie with his beautifully internalized performance as the outward cowardly Alan who steps up when he has to. Tatum alone makes this film worth sitting through.