A Scientist at the Movies Reviews by Greg Paris

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Title: Dragonfly

Date Viewed: 3/19/02

Details:

Kevin Costner

Susanna Thompson

Kathy Bates

Linda Hunt

Director: Tom Shadyac

Score: 1/2

The Review: Paranormal, near-death-experience (NDE) infused romantic mystery (not a classification scheme you run into everyday, now is it?). Costner plays a confused, conflicted, anguished, manifestly rational, but mostly just obsessed physician whose wife, also a physician, has died in Columbia on a Red Cross mission. Not thrilled by her decision to make the trip, and frustrated by his inability to reach her before things turn ugly, he takes her loss hard. But as he continues to practice medicine, instead of grieve, odd things begin to happen -- things which may be real NDE's of his wife's patients, or may be obsessive schizophrenic fantasies. And they seem to point toward some sort of indecipherable message.

The title comes from the wife's totem animal, which is a theme that recurs throughout the film.

Coster seems decent in these intense, obsessive, monomaniacally focused roles; he's not overly likeable, but you understand what he's going through. The conflict is adequately drawn (although perhaps a bit overlong and too thick) between a rational atheist approach to the permanent death of the soul, and the possibility of evidence for NDE's, the latter forcing Costner into contemplating a more Christian philosophy. Intends to be an intellectual mystery, but doesn't quite connect. Hunt is wonderful in a small role as a Catholic nun with research proclivities, and Bates is fun as his next-door neighbor.

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