Beating to a Too Measured Pace

A fearlessly traditional romantic melodrama done up in grand Hollywood style, “Random Hearts” is not lacking in good things, from Sydney Pollack’s polished direction to emotional and involving performances by stars Harrison Ford and Kristin Scott Thomas.

Yet as satisfying as this film is at moments, it’s hard to shake the feeling that it’s throwing good money after bad. The fault is not in the acting, directing or script (by Kurt Luedtke, who won an Oscar for Pollack’s “Out of Africa”) but rather that the film’s underlying concept is so irredeemably screwy and far-fetched that no amount of fine work can hope to make it convincing.

That notion comes from a 1984 Warren Adler novel about an unlikely romance that has not surprisingly defeated several earlier attempts to film it. This is the story not just of two people who, to quote the ad copy, would never have met in a perfect world, but of two people we’re not convinced should ever have been brought together even on a movie screen.

Using artful cross-cutting, “Random Hearts” (the title echoes the equally improbable classic weepy “Random Harvest”) unhurriedly introduces Dutch Van Den Broeck and Kay Chandler, protagonists who start out in completely different Washington, D.C., worlds.

Dutch (Ford) is an 11-year veteran of the D.C. police force, a drinks-beer-from-the-bottle kind of guy who’s now a sergeant in Internal Affairs, working with partner Alcee (Charles S. Dutton) to root out crooked cops. Apparently happily married, Dutch thinks nothing of it when his wife, a Saks fashion employee, says a business trip is taking her away on short notice.

Kay (Scott Thomas) is also unconcerned about her husband’s flying out of town. A congresswoman from New Hampshire who’s looking at a tough reelection campaign against a well-financed loose cannon, Kay is a Yankee aristocrat with high principles she hopes to pass on to her 15-year-old daughter.

What Dutch and Kay don’t know is that their spouses, far from traveling anywhere on business, are seated next to each other on a flight to Miami, headed for the latest chapter in an elaborately hidden extramarital affair. The only detail the cheaters haven’t counted on is a plane crash that will kill both of them and reveal their infidelity.

Make that “gradually reveal,” because “Random Hearts” is so stately, so intent on taking its own good time, that Dutch and Kay don’t even meet until about 45 minutes into the picture. Pleasant though a little regal gentility can be, it’s hard not to wish that the film had more of the insistent energy that, ironically, Pollack provides as an actor in his role as Kay’s sassy and realistic media consultant Carl Broman.

When the pair do meet, at Dutch’s instigation, their interaction is hardly promising. While Kay’s primarily worried about the mental health of her daughter, Dutch, ever the persistent policeman, is getting practically demented in his mania to find out all the details of an affair that is now literally as cold as the tomb.

Also, Kay has her campaign to worry about, while Dutch, who starts out as an officer who believes passionately in the difference between right and wrong, gets so bent out of shape about his wife’s deception that it starts to affect his professional judgment. (The lumbering subplot about Dutch and Alcee’s investigation of a rogue detective played by Dennis Haysbert is the script’s weakest aspect.)

Perhaps inspired by the necessity of conveying a romantic notion so far-fetched it’s hard to even write it down, both Ford and Scott Thomas create characters more believable than it would have seemed possible.

Though much of his career has been spent with either action roles or light comedies, Ford is strong and convincing in this romantic drama. Both his intensely masculine, weathered look and his tendency not to over-emote work for him here, though the almost demented way he reacts to his wife’s duplicity can be more than we want to deal with at times.

As for Scott Thomas, her work as always leaves you grasping for superlatives. Helped by much better chemistry with her co-star than she had with Robert Redford in “The Horse Whisperer,” the actress makes the confusion and despair inherent in her situation both real and alive. When she says, “Who is this woman who is wearing my clothes, using my body?,” her dismay comes from the heart.

But as difficult as it is for Kay and Dutch to trust what’s happening to them, it’s even harder for us to believe it. Perhaps the good work Pollack and the actors have done toward making the characters realistic is counterproductive, for as this romance tentatively develops, the temptation to scream “no, no, no” at the contrived on-screen doings increases. Fatally neither here nor there, this is the story of a couple we can’t happily envision either together or apart, and that is not a happy state of affairs.

* MPAA rating: R, for brief violence, sexuality and language. Times guidelines: adult subject matter.

‘Random Hearts’

Harrison Ford: Dutch Van Den Broeck

Kristin Scott Thomas: Kay Chandler

Charles S. Dutton: Alcee

Bonnie Hunt: Wendy Judd

Dennis Haysbert: Det. George Beautfort

Carl Broman: Sydney Pollack

A Rastar/Mirage Enterprises production, released by Columbia Pictures. Director Sydney Pollack. Producers Sydney Pollack, Marykay Powell. Executive producers Ron Schwary, Warren Adler. Screenplay Kurt Luedtke. Adaptation Darryl Ponicsan. Based on the novel by Warren Adler. Cinematographer Philippe Rousselot. Editor William Steinkamp. Costumes Bernie Pollack. Music Dave Grusin. Production design Barbara Ling. Art director Chris Shriver. Set decorator Susan Bode. Running time: 2 hours, 11 minutes.

In general release.