Visually stunning, John Boorman’s The Emerald Forest is based on a true story, as related by Los Angeles Times correspondent Leonard Greenwood.
Grade: B+ (**** out of *****)
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The Emerald Forest world-premiered to great acclaim at the 1985 Cannes Film Fest; it is considered to be a comeback for Boorman, after several artistically disappointing movies.
Powers Boothe stars as Bill Markham, a U.S. engineer working on a dam project in the Amazonian jungles.
Drama kicks in when Bill’s young son, Tomme (played by Boorman’s real-life son, Charley Boorman) is kidnapped in the rain forest by a tribe called “The Invisible People,” a group that has never experienced contact with Caucasians.
The authorities give up on the boy as being lost, but Bill perseveres in searching for his son, for over 10 years.
While fleeing for his life from The Fierce People (enemies of The Invisible People), he’s rescued by Tomme, now an adoptee of The Invisible People’s chief.
To Bill’s frustration, Tomme initially refuses to join his biological father and return to white civilization, but when The Fierce People abduct all of the women in the Invisible People tribe, Tomme seeks his father’s help in rescuing them.
A tale of culture collision, The Emerlad Forest is yet another tribute to John Ford’s 1956 classic, The Searchers, starring John Wayne as the obsessively racist white man and Natalie Wood as his niece who is kidnapped by the Indians.
Credits
Directed, produced by John Boorman
Written by Rospo Pallenberg
Produced by Michael Dryhurst, Edgar Gross
Cinematography Philippe Rousselot
Music by Brian Gascoigne
Junior Homrich
Production company:,Christel Films
Distributed by Embassy Films Associates (through Rank Film Distributors[1])
Release dates: July 3, 1985 (US)
Running time: 114 minutes
Budget: $15 million
Box office: $24,468,550 (U.S. and Canada)
