Six Days Seven Nights (1998) – DVD

**/**** Image B+ Sound A-
starring Harrison Ford, Anne Heche, David Schwimmer, Jacqueline Obradors
screenplay by Michael Browning
directed by Ivan Reitman

by Bill Chambers Still smarting from back-to-back high-profile failures (the Arnie-gets-pregnant comedy Junior and the Billy Crystal/Robin Williams team-up Father's Day), director Ivan Reitman needed a hit, badly. In casting Six Days Seven Nights, he took out the closest thing to a living insurance policy you will find in Hollywood: Harrison Ford. For Ford's co-star and the female lead, he chose Anne Heche, who's spent a few years in the trenches (best friend and wife roles) gaining traction as the next Meg Ryan. Then Ford seemed to go through a mid-life crisis, sporting an earring and a hip new look on the talk-show circuit that felt like a rejection of his stoic image and the fans thereof. And Heche came out as a lesbian in a public declaration of love for Ellen DeGeneres. It created a lot of static for both their performances and audiences to overcome, yielding Reitman's third flop in a row. Does this mean Six Days Seven Nights is some buried treasure you'd be lucky to discover at the video store? Not really, because the movie is pretty unremarkable except as a PR train crash. Let's be honest: Reitman has coasted since Ghostbusters; sometimes he hits a double, but this is not one of those times.

Heche and David Schwimmer play a big-city yuppie couple on an island getaway. Schwimmer proposes. Romance is in the air. Lesuirus interruptus for business reasons. Drunkard pilot Ford must transport Heche to the mainland in his rickety plane. Schwimmer decides not to tag along because he's third-billed. A storm. A crash. Heche and Ford are stranded on an uncharted atoll. The rest is Lina Wertmüller by way of Ivan Reitman. Back at the resort, Schwimmer pairs up with Ford's vampy girlfriend (Jacqueline Obradors), presumably so we can rest easy that everything's even stevens.

To say Six Days Seven Nights is predictable is to miss the point: would you want this movie to defy expectations? It's a "shipwreck" pic featuring an attractive, half-dressed couple. (Wouldn't it have been great if said boozy pilot had been played by, say, John Goodman, and his new lady friend by Gloria Stuart? Now that would test the "men and women can't be friends because the sex part always gets in the way" theory.) For a while, the film coasts on the charms of its principals: I know Tom Cruise isn't a sports agent, but that doesn't make Jerry Maguire any less enjoyable. Similarly, who cares if Anne Heche is a Libyan? She's an actor, first and foremost. I believed that she and Ford's character had grown to care for each other. It's actually too bad this isn't an Indiana Jones movie, since she's a good foil for Ford's cantankerousness.

Not that it doesn't attempt to be. About halfway through, the very Reitman-ness of the picture shines through, as the comedy takes a backseat to blockbuster ambitions and armed pirates pursue our heroic couple with M-16s and the like. Father's Day incorporated drug dealers into its plot, Junior evil doctors, Kindergarten Cop a nasty homicidal maniac, Twins a convoluted money caper… What is a high concept if it can't sustain 90 minutes of screentime on its own? Danny DeVito and Arnold Schwarzenegger as genetically-manipulated twin brothers searching for their birth mother needs more story? Who Reitman is and who he wants to be are perpetually at odds.

One final complaint about Six Days Seven Nights, then the prosecution rests: What should have been the last line of the picture, delivered beautifully by Ford…isn't. I may have even elevated my rating another half-star had Reitman the courage to fade out just ten seconds sooner, although I confess I now only remember the line, and forget how the picture betrays it.

THE DVD
Transfer-wise, the Six Days Seven Nights DVD, its lack of 16×9 enhancement aside, has few strikes against it. Indeed, it's so true and brilliant, I can write with a straight face that certain shots look as good as the format ever has on my 32" 4:3 television. The image is letterboxed at 2.35:1. Bright exterior scenes are reproduced the best (as is usually the case), but even the night scenes are stunningly clear. This is the ideal venue for Michael Chapman's impressive, restrained cinematography; he's usually stuck shooting an urban setting (such as Taxi Driver's steamy streets), and here he proves himself adept at framing postcard-worthy pictures.

The DD 5.1 mix on this disc is solid–nice separation effects, good bass (the rolling thunder is impressive), and those cannon blasts near the end of the picture are loud. The mix is ultimately as imaginative as the film, however, as ample opportunities for a broader, deeper soundfield are missed. (The only wildlife these two encounter in a jungle-scape? A snake and a pig.) Extras include a soft-focused trailer at 1.85:1 and some feeble title recommendations–your standard no-frills, inflated-cost Buena Vista disc, in other words.

102 minutes; PG-13; 2.35:1; English DD 5.1, English Dolby Surround; CC; DVD-5; Region One; Touchstone