MEDICINE MAN. Directed by John McTiernan; written by Tom Schulman and Sally Robinson; produced by Andrew G. Vajna and Donna Dubrow. Starring Sean Connery and Lorraine Bracco. Rated PG-13.
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Medicine Man is an ambitious combination of many different styles of movies. It's a love story (of the kind where the principals spat more than spoon), a scientific mystery, a travelogue, and almost a documentary.
One thing it's not is a polemic about saving the rainforests. It certainly makes the point that this should be done. But it doesn't beat us over the head with it.
Campbell (Connery) is a reclusive biochemist working in Brazil (the movie was actually filmed in Mexico) who has requested some technical help from the pharmaceutical company that employs him. The help comes in the form of Rae Crane (Bracco), who is actually there to pass judgement on his research as well as to assist him.
But he really needs the help, and the stakes are high. A tribal medicine man has shown him a serum which rapidly and completely eliminates cancerous tumors. But he can't seem to duplicate the formula, he has only a small amount of the original stuff left, and the Indians who know won't tell him how to prepare more.
In spite of some post-production complaints that you may have read about, the love story angle in Medicine Man is pretty successful. I may be somewhat prejudiced here, since I'm terribly fond of Connery and enjoyed Bracco's performance a lot in GoodFellas. But I think their contentious romance works well, if predictably.
The mystery sub-plot doesn't come off quite as well, perhaps because it's a little complicated. Viewers who are non-scientists may find it disconcerting that someone as capable as Campbell (after all, with Connery playing him, he couldn't be anything else, could he?) could be so close, and yet so far, from such an important discovery.
And, of course, we know how the story must turn out, since no miracle cure has been discovered for cancer. Although, and here is the movie's conservation message—we should say that one hasn't been discovered yet.
Where Medicine Man is most entertaining is in its depiction of the native culture and in the scenic backdrop of the rainforest itself. Crane and Campbell must search near the top of the forest canopy for the plant that yields the serum. And the scene in which they slide on rope chairs from treetop to treetop is one of the movie's highlights. The view from above the trees is breathtaking, but smoke from the logging road, moving ever closer, reminds us of its fragility.
February 26, 1992