Medicine Man (film)
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| Medicine Man | |
|---|---|
 original movie poster |
|
| Directed by | John McTiernan |
| Produced by | Donna Dubrow Andrew G. Vajna Sean Connery |
| Written by | Tom Schulman Sally Robinson |
| Starring | Sean Connery Lorraine Bracco José Wilker |
| Music by | Jerry Goldsmith |
| Cinematography | Donald McAlpine |
| Distributed by | Hollywood Pictures Cinergi Pictures |
| Release date(s) | February 7, 1992 |
| Running time | 106 min. |
| Budget | $40 million |
| Allmovie profile | |
| IMDb profile | |
Medicine Man is an American film, released in 1992 and directed by John McTiernan. It features Sean Connery as Dr. Robert Campbell, a researcher who ventures deep into the Amazon tropical rainforest searching for new medicines on behalf of a pharmaceutical company.
[edit] Summary
After a period of no communication the sponsoring pharmaceutical company receive a request for an additional research assistant and a gas chromatograph (GC). Believing Campbell and his research have gone 'off the rails' the company decide to send female researcher Dr Rae Crane (Lorraine Bracco) to convince him to abandon his research and return. When she arrives he is displeased. He had been expecting help but assumed it would be a friend and colleague of his. After an initial period of icy interaction they eventually warm up. When Crane presses Campbell to find out what he has been researching the past few months, he angrily demonstrates his results, and she is, appropriately, shocked: Campbell has managed to completely reduce malignant neoplasms in a native child (a cure for cancer) using an extract from a local plant. Even more shocking is Campbell's revelation that his oncological remedy has only been synthesized once and, despite his best efforts, he cannot seem to replicate the original chemical recipe. This ties into the scientific method through designing and controlling an experiment. Although their initial stock is running dangerously low, Campbell has tracked down one mysterious, elusive element, and with Crane's help, is determined to find it.
The main drama comes from the tension with a nearby logging company, who doesn't believe that Campbell's research is important enough to merit the salvation of the forest. Campbell is also explicit about not sharing his research, for fear of being unable to find the missing element in time before other, more well-funded researchers storm through the area -- thus destroying the lives of the indigenous people who live there.
Eventually, Crane and Campbell discover that the missing element is the presence of a rare kind of ant that often uses the flower (the main source of the cure) for food and habitation (the ants were often washed away during the preparation of the flowers for chemical analysis). The discovery is purely by accident. After testing several samples, Dr. Crane runs a calibration test on the G.C. Since she has run out of calibration samples, she creates a sugar-based test serum as a substitute, unaware that the same rare ants had invaded her sugar bowl. The ants go in with the sugar solution, and the sample comes up positive, a match for the original flower sample that had the healing properties.
However, their revelation comes too late. The logging company comes plowing through the forest, building a road straight through the area of Dr. Campbell's research. There is an accident, and a bulldozer catches fire. The fire quickly spreads through the forest, burning up the village and the research post along with many acres of rainforests.
The final scene features a voice-over narration by Crane to her fiancee, informing him that she will accompany Campbell on his searches even deeper into the forest.
[edit] Trivia
- Sean Connery based his hairstyle upon that of the film's composer, Jerry Goldsmith, whom Connery was friends with. Goldsmith is even jokingly-listed in the end credits as one of Connery's hairstylists.
- Early in the film Campbell (Sean Connery) tells Crane (Lorraine Bracco) he was planning to call her 'Brooklyn' to which Crane replies 'I'm from the Bronx'. In real life Bracco is from Brooklyn.
