Medicine Man

1992 "He turned his back on civilization. Only to discover he had the power to save it."
6| 1h46m| PG-13| en| More Info
Released: 07 February 1992 Released
Producted By: Hollywood Pictures
Country: United States of America
Budget: 0
Revenue: 0
Official Website:
Synopsis

An eccentric scientist working for a large drug company is working on a research project in the Amazon jungle. He sends for a research assistant and a gas chromatograph because he's close to a cure for cancer. When the assistant turns out to be a "mere woman," he rejects her help. Meanwhile the bulldozers get closer to the area in which they are conducting research, and they eventually learn to work together, and begin falling in love.

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Reviews

Lucybespro It is a performances centric movie
CommentsXp Best movie ever!
Nessieldwi Very interesting film. Was caught on the premise when seeing the trailer but unsure as to what the outcome would be for the showing. As it turns out, it was a very good film.
Marva It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,
kellwyn86 I decided to watch this movie thinking I would love watching it. And rightly so, it re-awakened the spirit of an amazing journey I never had or I might never be able to have. "Life is strange, but down here it seems very precious."Truly precious this life, Im glad at least I chose to watch this. Instead of just living in the cancerous tavern of greed and ambition to just succeed and further decreasing standards to just survive and calling it progress, our lives have been literally transformed by the hunt for unwanted unknown progress which can never provide fulfillment to our souls.This is exactly what this movie signifies for me. I believe that living so abundantly takes more than just courage and intelligence. "Breeding is no substitute for intelligence."Medicine ManWatch this one ! its a glimpse on where mankind is truly headed and we're in the middle of it !
HelloTexas11 I was surprised I liked 'Medicine Man' as much as I did. One's first inclination would be to dismiss it as a goody two-shoes, 'save the rain forests' diatribe, and on top of that, it makes us sit through yet another on-screen relationship where the man and woman can't stand each other at first and then fall in love. I almost gave up on it about ten minutes in, after listening to Lorraine Bracco bitch about everything in sight with a nails-on-chalkboard New York accent. But both those characterizations turn out to be unfair and false. The movie actually accepts the inevitability of at least part of the rain forest being paved over; its complaint is much smaller and tightly defined- it's saying, at least wait till we've replicated the cancer serum that Sean Connery's Dr. Campbell discovered and then lost. And Campbell and Dr. Crane (Bracco) never fall in love. I don't think they ever even kiss. It's difficult to say exactly what kind of relationship they end up having, except that it's a lot of fun to watch. Ultimately, it's easy to say with certainty what is so right about 'Medicine Man.' It's Sean Connery's performance, and it is magnificent. While this is not the best movie he's ever been in (no question there), I really believe this might be his greatest acting job. It is subtle, nuanced, powerful, humorous... he has a way with the dialogue that makes it utterly believable, and his portrayal of Campell is also a very physical one. When he gets angry, his anger is incredibly palpable, both to be heard and seen. There is not a false note in it. He even raises the level of the requisite tit-for-tat back-and-forth arguments with Bracco's Crane to something more genuine and meaningful. There is a grace in his physical movements that is very natural, even in the brief fight scene toward the end. Everything he does seems real. And Lorraine Bracco, as it turns out, compliments his performance with a fine one of her own. The script gives her many opportunities to flesh out Dr. Crane's character (or, as Campbell calls her, 'Dr. Bronx'), and she does so with a lot of high spirits and enthusiasm. One of the best scenes has her bouncing off the walls, figuratively speaking, from a local concoction very high in caffeine. The location camera-work is another wonderful part of 'Medicine Man.' This may be the closest any 2-D film has come to seeming three dimensional. When it rains, you almost feel as soaked as the characters on screen. And when Connery and Bracco go gliding on ropes and pulleys over the canopy, looking down at the treetops and miles of forest in the distance, the effect is breathtaking. The ending should be a downer but somehow 'Medicine Man' manages an epilogue to the depressing finale that is hopeful, uplifting and encouraging while not seeming the least bit contrived or manipulative. It is the last wonder in an excellent movie full of them.
fedor8 "Life is so strange, but here it seems so precious". That's Bracco's last line (or one of them), a very "deep" and "touching" line - but it's in VERY stark contrast to what she thought about the Rainforest during the shooting of this film. Apparently, everyone in the cast and crew, including Connery, hated filming there. You know, the usual LESS romantic aspects of the Amazon, like mosquitoes, the incessant noise, the heat, bad food, crappy accommodations, various creepy-crawlies etc.Hollywood truly is a bull***t factory, and this movie is no exception. Don't get me wrong, Bracco and Connery are charismatic enough to ensure this to be quite pleasant viewing, but watching Connery fight against lumber-company bulldozers in the middle of the night like some aged James Bondian scientist, was too much even for Tinseltown. It just screamed "cheese" to me."BIG LUMBER CORPORATION NEARLY DESTROYS ALL HOPE FOR A CURE FOR CANCER".That's the kind of headline that the writers of this preachy nonsense would like to imagine, but they don't live in the real world so they can only put it on screen for gullible, uninformed viewers to hopefully (from their left-wing perspective) believe.Flowers... ants... you just need to bend down to tie your shoe-laces in the Amazon Rainforest and you'll stumble upon a cure for cancer, AIDS, leukemia, schizophrenia, the bubonic plague, you name it. Of course, even the Amazon doesn't have a cure for a liberals' naivety. And there's no cure for the stupidity of believing that a bunch of flowers, ants, frogs and trees all hold magical cures for most of mankind's physical ills.Yes, it's wrong and dangerous to cut down the Rainforest indiscriminately. However, let's not get all dramatic and weepy and exaggerate the relevance of the flora and fauna there.I'd like to know why various directors insisted on Connery wearing those god-awful long-hair wigs in his later movies. "The Rock" also comes to mind. What's the point? He just look silly.As for Bracco, she's gorgeous. Had the movie been made today, it would have stunk, because Cameron Diaz would have played Dr."Bronx", and Tom Hanks would have been the scientist. I think I wanna vomit...
Robert J. Maxwell Okay, there's this weird scientist, Sean Connery, who's hidden himself away in the tropical rainforest of South America and has been incommunicado for years. A "foundation" sends down a youngish, award-winning scientist, played by Lorraine Bracco, to monitor his behavior, find out what's up, and decide whether or not to cut off his funding. Lots of barbed exchanges here between the old curmudgeon and the independent new woman. Some comedy too as he slips her a psychedelic that cures headaches. As it develops, Connery, with Bracco's help, finds the source of a cure for lymphoma in the top terrace of the rainforest. Alas, before he can harvest enough of the stuff to explore the possibility of its being synthesized, some big industrial operation plows a road through the forest and destroys the trees in which the stuff grows. Bittersweet ending. Humankind is hoist by its own petard by what some ecologists call a "progress trap." As compensation the old fox and the young feminist become friends. It's a bad trade.Between 1960 and 1990 one fifth of the world's rainforest was lost. In Brazil, where this film is supposedly set, the Amazon rainforest between 1991 (when the film was shot) and the year 2000 has lost between 415 and 587 square kilometers, an area about twice the size of Portugal. The tragedy is not that the forest is gone. Who cares about wood? It's the consequences, many of them falling into the category of "unknown unknowns" that counts. WOULD a biochemist of Sean Connery's persistence and quirkiness have found a way of combating lymphoma (or anything else)? We're not going to find out now. Among the "known known" consequences, the deforestation has eliminated entire species of plants and animals at an alarming rate, including one primate. (Humans are primates too.) The little message behind the story is, of course, fashionable and politically correct, which for some people makes it wrong. Lorraine Bracco, with her bulky figure and oddly handsome features, seems a likable woman. You can tell because in all of her performances she seems to be playing herself. She can be loud and stubborn but one never senses genuine contempt behind her shouting. I wouldn't mind having an argument with her. It might be amusing. Sean Connery plays a role that must by now be familiar to him, almost shopworn, and he does his schtick well. There appears to be a lot of half-naked Guaranis running around, acting as translators and comic relief, but this is really a two-person picture.At one point Bracco is tripping on this native stuff and having a hell of a good time. She babbles on about marketing it for adults, putting sugar in it, and calling it by some pronounceable name. I wish that she'd have accomplished that because unless we recognize a progress trap when we see one coming, we may need that psychedelic elixir.