The Mosquito Coast is a brilliantly crafted story. It follows Allie Fox (Harrison Ford) a restless and annoying, genius and inventor who was so disappointed with the current state of America (he believed it to be materialistic, violent and cynical) that he decided to move his family: his wife "Mother" (Helen Mirren), sons Charlie (River Phoenix) and Jerry (Jadrien Steele) and twin daughters April (Hilary Gordon) and Clover (Rebecca Gordon) to a remote area in Central America. He dreamed of creating a more simplistic life and with help from many of the locals such as Mr. Haddy (Conrad Roberts), he was well on his way of achieving that.
Despite clashing with an overbearing minister, Reverend Spellgood (Andre Gregory), everything was going well for Allie and his family, they built a house, created a garden and Allie even created a large scale ice-making machine. This experience really did seem like a dream come true, however, his restless spirit would not let him be content. And not to mention his growing sense of irrational hostility that had him slowly starting to lash out at others including his family. In trying to spread the astounding results of his ice-making machine, Allie took a group which included his sons and a few locals with him to travel through the jungle to try to bring ice (unsolicited) to an indigenous tribe. While it was an unsuccessful trip, Allie spotted guys he thought were missionaries and offered them a safe place to stay. However once they showed up to his family's home it turned out they were armed mercenaries and the men had no intentions of moving on.
The growing tension and sense of danger, had Allie doing something unbelievably drastic in order to get rid of the men. However, in the process of doing that, it led to a huge catastrophe that destroyed everything they had created. This was the start of a downward-spiral that would continue to get worse for this family. Allie had become so stubborn, delusional, unreasonable and mean that he couldn't see this experience was no longer working out. He completely disregarded his family's concerns when things started to go wrong. He wouldn't listen to them that they wanted to go back to America or at least go to where Mr. Haddy lived with his family. Instead he decided they should stay on what I believe was a deserted island and try to live on whatever they can find or catch.
He just wouldn't listen to reason and took his anger and hatred out on his family and Mr. Haddy especially after Mr. Haddy suggested the family leave because it wasn't safe. Because once a storm rolls in they will get swept away. Despite this warning, he didn't listen and that had the family having to drift along in a boat making their situation even worse.
I know that Harrison Ford was nominated for an Academy Award for his role in Witness, which was greatly earned, however, I feel like he should have received another for his role in this movie. Ford has played a lot of tough guy roles but his role as Allie Fox was a different feel altogether. He gave an outstanding performance of a man that started out as a dreamer with good intentions but steadily started to unravel and become irascible, domineering, self-righteous, hateful and selfish. He was really just a horrible person and it makes you feel so much sympathy for his family. I thought Helen Mirren and River Phoenix gave equally strong performances especially as they quickly became the voices of reason as Allie became even more unstable.
This is a good movie, there is a lot of depth to the story that's both subtle and powerful as you see this family go from looking forward to a new experience to it turning increasingly tragic. I love watching old movies and seeing what actors unexpectedly appear and in this it's Jason Alexander and Martha Plimpton. They have minor roles, he's a salesperson in a hardware store at the beginning of the movie and she's Emily Spellgood the daughter of the minister who was in Central America doing missionary work.
I'm not expecting all of the Harrison Ford movies in the Filmography Challenge to be gems because I'm sure sooner or later I'm going to watch one that's probably terrible. However, so far these five movies (well eight if I include the three movies I watched prior to starting this challenge: American Graffiti, Heroes and Force 10 from Navarone), have been really good. The Mosquito Coast holds up as a great film that's truly worth watching as it follows a family that was looking for a better life that unfortunately turned very tragic.
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