Alice Bowman: Meg Ryan	Terry Thorne: Russell Crowe
Peter Bowman: David Morse	Dino: David Caruso
Janis Bowman: Pamela Reed	Director: Taylor Hackford

30 Second Bottom Line: Revolutionaries kidnap an American business executive in South America and demand a $5 million dollar ransom. His wife works with a hostage negotiator to return her husband alive. In the course of that effort, they fall in love with each other.

Story Line: Terry Thorne (Russell Crowe) is on a K&R (kidnap and ransom) mission in Europe. He's smart, a tough negotiator, and a fierce fighter, if necessary. He gets his man out. On his return to home base in London, Thorne is assigned to retrieve Peter Bowman (David Morse), who has been kidnapped in South America.

Peter is a somewhat naïve, idealistic, and liberal minded corporate field manager, who thinks he is there to build a water dam. He later understands that the dam is the diversion to obtain the rights to drill for oil. After Peter's kidnapping, Terry meets with his wife Alice (Meg Ryan), and his sister Janis (Pamela Reed), to devise a plan to get Peter back alive. The situation has become one of not just negotiation, but doing so with little money, as the company has not renewed the kidnap insurance, in a cost cutting measure.

While Terry, Alice and Janis are working to get Peter out by paying a ransom, he is thinking like a prisoner of war and looking for a way to escape. This proves more than a little difficult because he is moved to a remote area, high in the mountains. During an escape attempt, a fellow prisoner gets away. He has a map of the area that Peter scratched out for him in a bible. Because of the skills required to build dams, Peter is well versed in topography.

When Terry gets the map, he decides to perform an extraction, much like Israeli commandos might do. He brings in his buddy Dino (David Caruso), to put together a team to go into the camp and rescue Peter and an Italian executive, under the cover of a diversionary attack.

Alice and Peter are experiencing stress in their marriage, because he is frustrated with his job and she has followed him around the globe, living in third world countries. On the outside, she is the contented wife, but at home, things are less than blissful. Their relationship became more intense when she had a miscarriage earlier in the year.

Were it not for the kidnapping, they seem on the way to splitsville, even though they love each other. The romance that builds between Alice and Terry is the type of thing that can happen when people are under stress and are thinking of making a change. The question then becomes, What will they do if and when Peter comes home alive and well? Will Terry not try as hard, so that he and Alice can be together?

Tell Me More About It: Proof of Life starts out good and gets continuously better, right to the very last scene in the film. I thought that the real life romance between Ryan and Crowe would detract from the film, but it does not. The story moves quickly, and each of the key characters, while related to the central plot line, have their own story, which develops along side the main theme.

Meg Ryan demonstrates that she can act in a politically charged drama and still be the girl next door. Without Russell Crowe, this would likely have been an average ransom movie; with him, it is elevated far above what normally comes out of Hollywood with well known movie stars. Although my vote for best actor last year was Denzel Washington, if there is anyone who should have won, it was Russell Crowe for his work in The Insider.

After seeing him in Gladiator, it's clear that he is one of the best actors making films today. He can take on different roles without reminding you of his last film. Such is not the case with Kevin Spacey and Nicholas Cage. Hopefully, Cage will break out of that rut in the Family Man, which will be released later this month.

David Morse has provided us with some outstanding supporting actor performances in the last year. He gives an Oscar caliber performance here, and with his recent work in Dancer in the Dark and The Green Mile, I hope that we see more of him in the future. Morse could get an Oscar nomination for this film, as could Crowe.

A real surprise is seeing David Caruso's strong contribution, with his buddy role as Terry's business partner. These G. Gordon Liddy types come in handy under the right circumstances.

Pamela Reed reacts like a sister who is no nonsense, takes no names, and will kick butt, in her desire to free her brother. The intensity in her eyes provides the feel of a real live news broadcast, when the reporters are pushing cameras and questions at you.

The politics of the revolutionaries starts out pure, as they are against the corporations who want to rape the land of its oil, in exchange for a dam to control flooding. However, drug trade money subverts them, so that they are no better morally than the corporation that wants to take their oil while spoiling the land.

Crowe and Caruso are so good together that I sense a sequel in the making. They are smart businessmen, who have everyday human frailties, yet they provide the action of James Bond, Shaft or Mission Impossible, with deeds that are not only believable, but possible.

Meg Ryan: You've Got Mail	Russell Crowe: Gladiator & Insider
David Morse: Dancer in the Dark	David Caruso: NYPD -TV
Pamela Reed: Why Do Fools Fall In Love?	Taylor Hackford: The Devil's Advocate