Good Drama, December 18, 2000

The inherent dangers of living in a country in which political agendas have been compromised, and where wealth takes precedence over integrity, are made brutally clear to an American engineer who takes a job in South America, only to become the victim of a kidnapping for ransom in "Proof Of Life," directed by Taylor Hackford and starring Russell Crowe and Meg Ryan. Peter Bowman (David Morse) is hired by an oil company to build a dam that will facilitate the construction of a pipeline, but is kidnapped at random by a band of guerrillas whose political agenda has long since given way to the more lucrative business of terrorism purely for the sake of capital gains. When it happens, the London based insurance company whose business it is to underwrite conglomerates around the world to cover this particular kind of situation sends in it's "K&R" (Kidnap and ransom) man, Terry Thorne (Crowe), to negotiate the release of Bowman. And it quickly becomes a game in which most of the...