“The Lost City”: layered adventure romance to test the grit of a novelist and her boyfriend in real life.
“The Lost City”, directed by brothers Adam and Aaron Nee, based on a story by Seth Gordon, with Oron Uziel assisting with the screenplay, is a popcorn romantic adventure (almost dramedy) that seems to make fun of Hollywood and the big-first tier author book publishing business (you know, authors who make a living off of advances as required for membership in Authors Guild, which does not like amateurism. To dispel coincidences: it has no relation to Andy Garcia’s 2005 film of the same name about the death of pre-communist Cuba (a more important film for posterity).
The plot of this new movie is layered by the plot of an embedded imagined novel. Loretta Sage (Sandra Bullock) has authored a romance “Crown of Fire” that sounds, to put it simply, related to the Atlantis legend, and which may have a hidden city with treasures. Her publicist Beth Hatten (Da’Vine Joy Randolph) insists on a big book tour with the cover model Alan Caprison (Channing Tatum). In an early scene, Loretta tries to remove his shirt at an audience QA, resulting in humor (remember Channing Tatum’s performance in “Magic Mike” (2012) about his pre-shaving his body.
The novel had been based on research done by Loretta’s deceased husband, and has come to the attention of oligarch Abigail Fairfax (Daniel Radcliffe, not very convincing in this part as someone Putin would want). Fairfax and his minions kidnap Loretta, and Alan is put in the position of proving his manliness in real life (however he may have mocked it previously) by rescuing Loretta from the mythical island. The movie settles into its predicable Harmon story circle at this point. There is a bit of a plot twist in that Alan hires a former seal commander Jack Trainer (Brad Pitt), to show up in a med-credits pose (in the Harmon “new normal”).
The film was shot in Dominican Republic (the more fortunate companion of Haiti). The scenery around the (active) volcano (Pico Duarte) and the archeological find look a bit fake, necessarily.
Wikipedia picture of Pico Duarte, CCSA 3.0 embed, click for attribution.
Name: “The Lost City”
Director, writer: Nee Brothers, Seth Gordon
Released: 2022/3/25
Format: 2.39:1
When and how viewed: Angelica Mosaic, 2022/4/9 light audience
Length: 112
Rating: PG-13
Companies: 3dot, Paramount
Link: Deadline
Stars: ***__
(Posted: Saturday, April 9, 2022 at 7 PM EDT by John W Boushka)