The Mosquito Coast (1986)

Too many fans seem to be blown away

Some things I liked some I did not.

Purely Joyful Movie!

Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

The Mosquito Coast is about a man following his convictions above all even to the detriment of his family. Harrison Ford is the man here playing an egotistical and iconoclastic inventor who takes his wife Helen Mirren and the four kids to Belize to set up his own idea of Utopia to escape the impending holocaust he sees as imminent.If Harrison Ford indeed says this was his favorite role I think I know why. It is certainly one that is challenging in that in addition to ego and self righteousness you have to have a certain amount of charisma to hold even your family to you. Otherwise Helen Mirren would have taken maybe the first two kids and left him flat. Ford's world leaves no room for dissent.Ford literally buys an abandoned town and makes himself mayor and builds an ice machine. In Belize this is something new and strange to the natives there. For a while Ford is held in wonder, but like with all Utopian schemes things go terribly wrong.Ford's great antagonist is missionary Andre Gregory. Ford has a great old time mocking Gregory's religion, but as it turns out in the end Gregory has a far greater understanding of the surroundings he's in than Ford could ever aspire to. Watching The Mosquito Coast I was thinking of Jean Jacques Rousseau and his ideas of the 'noble savage' which Ford has swallowed uncritically. What would Rousseau do if he was set down in modern Belize?Gregory also has a daughter played by Martha Plimpton and she awakens in his oldest son River Phoenix certain feelings that Ford for all his wisdom never discussed with his pubescent son. River is the first voice of dissent in the absolute monarchy that Ford rules over.In real life River Phoenix and Martha Plimpton were an item for a bit. Later on she was paired off on the screen with River in Running On Empty.This film and Running On Empty are both about a parent living an iconoclastic life and the affect it has on the family. River Phoenix's own family life, the communal living style they had probably gave him a wealth of experience to draw from. Although as he was quick to point out his family weren't fugitives from the law as they were in Running On Empty.Ford's dissent in total madness is something to see. I wonder if that would have happened to Rousseau.

The Mosquito Coast was the second collaboration between Harrison Ford and Peter Weir, coming directly on the heels of their first, the superb Witness. Like his work with Mel Gibson at the beginning of the decade, Weir's teaming up with Ford allowed the director to find a muse who would not only be able to accurately portray the complex themes and emotions of the character, but also give the actor a rare chance to demonstrate his true worth as a versatile performer.Harrison Ford, as the eccentric inventor Allie Fox, is given full control here and takes on a character that no one would ever expect to see him in, or would ever really expect to see him in again. He has played the guy who is fed up before, but Allie Fox is fed up to the point of insanity. He's had it with America and in an ongoing series of Howard Beale-esque diatribes on the state of his once great country, he decides to pick up his family and move them all to the jungle, to experience life at it's most basic. At first it's a dream come true, but soon the Fox family finds that it's not America that's lost it's way, it is the whole of society and you'll encounter it wherever you go.The Mosquito Coast is more about it's themes than anything else, taking on serious explorations of the American family, the loss of innocence in a father/son relationship where the son must become a man and stand up to his father and many facets of religion and it's place in the family and society. I felt like the mother's unwillingness to stand up to Allie was a little unbelievable as his descent into madness progressed, but it was a necessary artificiality in order to bring the character study full circle and turn Allie into the kind of menace that he was constantly accusing America of being. He brings his family down much in the way that he claims America is bringing everyone else down, and it's a powerful dissection of this deeply flawed and arrogant man.Ford delivers what could well be the finest work of his career, stripping away all of his immense charm and taking on a deeply unlikeable character. This is a man who could have easily been torture to have to sit with for two hours, but Ford's charisma and always engaging screen presence is able to make him a fascinating man to study. River Phoenix does fine work as the eldest son of the family, as does Helen Mirren as the mother.Weir's absorbing direction takes a bit of a backseat here, settling for a more conventional tone and instead allowing the story and the character to take over the picture, which is a bold and appropriate move for him to make. It speaks to his intelligence as a director that he knows when to step back and let the other elements take the front seat, although there are still a few magnificently staged sequences that stand strong in Weir's roster of them.

I've recently re-watched this movie and, after looking up the reviews on here, was quite surprised to see such a low rating and such negative reviews. I'm still not quite sure why, but my thoughts are that 1. people mistake this for a movie about ideas instead of a movie about a man, and 2. people think this will be a movie in which Harrison Ford plays the same old character instead of acts.Ford's character is not likable, which I think is the point. He is a narcissist blinded to the way the world works. He believes he can force the universe to his own will, as a narcissist will do. Certainly, the film takes this character to an extreme, but isn't that the point of drama? I found the characterization to be very spot on.This isn't the usual Hollywood slop pretending to be intellectual and deep. It is a study of complicated characters living in a complicated world without easy answers or neat conclusions.

This is an amazing, thought provoking film. Allie is like Noah building his ark, to save civilisation (surely people thought Noah was as crazy as he is?) To what extent is he right? To never give up. It must have been like this for the pioneers who created the US and Australia. They truly cannot go back. Here, the locals watch with tolerant amusement. Charlie hints that he will continue in his father's footsteps the end, yes, he is liberated by the departure of his father, but liberated to do what? Carry on in fact. What is the solution, a hut in a town on Mosquito coast? I don't know. It's hard to imagine what will happen next.Geronimo is like the garden of Eden, there's a snake. There's always a snake. Maybe the parable of the film is that Eden doesn't, can't exist, yet we must, should take ourselves to the limits to try to make it?