The Honorary Consul [DVD]

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In the final analysis, though it starts nobly, the movie does not accomplish what it set out to do: i. The story is set in the provincial city of Corrientes, part of the Argentine Littoral, on the shore of the Paraná River.

Army paratroopers surround the hut while the failed priest, Rivas, conducts a makeshift mass inside with the rain coming down. Vincent Canby of The New York Times wrote of "the grossly meaningless title that has been attached—like a bathtub to a car—to the screen adaptation of The Honorary Consul, Mr. This is chiefly because the movie does not do a satisfactory job of explaining who or what the group is fighting against. The film was produced by Norma Heyman, the first British woman to produce a solo independent feature film.Rivas and Aquino take Plarr to a squalid hut in a shanty town while bargaining with the authorities. Although I have never read the novel or indeed any of Graham Greene's other novels, I thought The Honorary Consul was quite entertaining a story despite not having seen the film before. Now a practicing doctor in a small Argentinian city, Plarr is approached by an old friend who tells him he's working with the Paraguayan underground and a disgraced British counsel (Michael Caine) on a plan to kidnap an ambassador and hold him for ransom in exchange for the release of Parr's father and several other prisoners. Charley Fortnum first comes across as a boozing has-been, but in the end, he is the voice of reason and humanity in the face of an insane, inhuman mess. We are supposed to believe that a Latin American dictator has been committing atrocities, but what effective recourse the revolutionaries have against him is never fully explained.

He accepts the fact that he is not the father of the baby, and even suggests naming the child Eduardo, after Plarr. Another person the doctor meets is Clara, whom he immediately falls in love with, but there is a problem: Clara is Charley's wife. Please visit the source responsible for the item in question to report any concerns you may have regarding content or accuracy. To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Retitled from The Honorary Consul and sold in America with one of Paramount’s sleaziest ad campaigns, John MacKenzie and Christopher Hampton’s adaptation of a Graham Greene novel features a fine Michael Caine performance, but prefers to stress sex scenes between star Richard Gere and Elpidia Carrillo.

Plarr travels to Buenos Aires in an unsuccessful attempt to persuade the British ambassador to intervene. Plarr is again summoned to the shack, this time to treat Fortnum for a gunshot wound sustained while trying to flee from a latrine. Eduardo Plarr is an unmarried medical doctor of English descent who, as a boy, fled to Buenos Aires with his Paraguayan mother to escape the political turmoil of Paraguay. Plarr into a showcase for Richard Gere represents a totally inappropriate intrusion of the director into the story's subject matter. Plarr initially refuses, but reluctantly agrees when Leon tells him that his father is one of the prisoners.

Fortnum asks Plarr to come to his house to attend to his wife, who is complaining of stomach cramps. They tell Plarr his father is alive and in a jail in Paraguay, and that they have a plot for which a doctor's assistance is needed to kidnap the US Ambassador on his trip to Corrientes to see ruins.The staff of Variety wrote that "strong talents on both sides of the camera haven’t managed to breathe life into this intricate tale of emotional and political betrayal and [the] result is a steady dose of tedium.