Ruby Cairo

23 February 2015

Ruby Cairo 1992

• Director: Graeme Clifford
• Based on novel: no
• Cast: Andie MacDowell, Liam Neeson, Viggo Mortensen, Jack Thompson
• Personal “oh yeah him/her” reaction, i.e. have seen this actor in:
• Andie MacDowell  – Tara Road, Riding the Bus with My Sister, Four Weddings and a Funeral, Groundhog Day
• Liam Neeson – Life’s Too Short, Seraphim Falls, Batman Begins, Kingdom of Heaven, Love Actually, Gangs of New York, Les Misérables, Michael Collins, Rob Roy, Nell, Schindler’s List, Suspect, Excalibur
• Viggo Mortensen – The Road, A History of Violence, Hidalgo, Lord of the Rings, Twenty-Eight Days, A Perfect Murder, Carlito’s Way, The Indian Runner, Witness
• Jack Thompson – The Great Gatsby, Australia, December Boys, The Assassination of Richard Nixon, Star Wars Episode II
• Why?  The title
• Seen:  February 22, 2015

The title is nice, the cast is promising, but I have no idea what the film is about.  It’s been on the shelf for a long time so why not watch it this evening?

Bessie Faro’s charming but ne’er-do-well pilot husband Johnny dies mysteriously in Mexico. She goes there to bury him and finds that it’s all suspicious. She’s helped by the handsome Feed the World organiser Fergus Lamb.

She’s a bit flaky but she discovers that Johnny has left clues about piles of cash he’s stashed away here and there around the world.  She’s good at solving puzzles so using the baseball cards on which he’s left clues she heads off. From Mexico to Panama, the Bahamas, the Cayman Islands, collecting great wads of cash as she goes.  In Berlin there’s more mystery. The money has already been collected. In East Berlin. So off she goes again. Then to Athens, where she begins to realise that Johnny is still alive.

And so Cairo. Where again she encounters the suspicious Fergus Lamb.

Adventure, chases, romance, nasty villains, picture postcard exotic venues...it’s just like a James Bond film! With an almost-white-trash southern belle instead of a Cambridge (or was it Oxford) posh Britt.

Is it as good as Bond?  Maybe, but it’s not any better.  At least the Bond films don’t take themselves seriously.

Sadly, Ruby Cairo does not live up to its name.

2 * of 5