Ransom (1996)

Rewatched 6/17/24 (DVD)

The 20th Century Mel Gibson crime film library is one of high highs, and is almost entirely without any kind of lows. Unfortunately, Mel’s personal lows have made such exceptional thrillers of his, such as 1996’s Ransom, widely unavailable. The aforementioned Ron Howard-directed barnburner can really only be found now on an old DVD or a sketchy website, both of which of course drastically increase the chance for an ill-timed freeze of your screen. And when the excitement is this twisty, this bloody, and this ‘90s, the last thing you want is for your screen to freeze.

Gibson is given the tall task in Ransom of making a billionaire airline owner likeable. With some potential behind-the-scenes shenanigans involving the paying off of a gangster to keep his empire, Gibson’s Tom Mullen could have veered far into scumbag, crime-affiliated rich prick territory. But somehow Gibson and director Ron Howard strike true the very thin, very well-conceived chords set before them by the script to have us behind Tom 100%. Even when disagreeing with and all but disavowing the also eminently-likeable Delroy Lindo as his FBI consultant/negotiatior, Mullen’s a guy we want to win. It’s Mel’s one-of-a-kind mix of crazy and vulnerable, the same two-handed dichotomy of power he brought to Lethal Weapon and Braveheart, in particular. Believably vacillating between volcanic rage and broken sorrow so quickly and with such reckless abandon would never work in the hands of a lesser actor. Gibson is one of the few out there truly up to this tricky task.

The plot involves richie rich Tom Mullen’s son being kidnapped by violent extortionists. Tom and his wife, Katherine, yet another good role for the great Rene Russo, this time much more upset than usual, must contend with both the FBI and the kidnappers to decide whether or not to pay the $2,000,000 being demanded. The extortionists claim that they will kill the Mullen child if this bond is not paid in full. So Tom, being the businessman he is, bends the rules. Tommy decides that it’s probably a decent idea to try offering the $2,000,000 instead as a bounty on the heads of the kidnappers, much to the chagrin of the his wife, kidnappers, and the local news service he announces his historic zag on. Now whoever turns in the criminals and saves the kid is the lottery winner. Oh shit.

Rene Russo is lights out from here on out, doing her thing to challenge Gibson scene after scene, replicating and often surpassing the thorough chemistry her and Mel displayed in Lethal Weapon 3 a few years earlier. I found myself wishing we had gotten more Russo over the years. There were few actresses in the ‘90s putting out performances like this, going toe to toe with every male in the movie. That is the fault of the industry, not those women, but it’s fun to imagine what higher heights Russo would have been able to climb to if she had kept working into the 2010s as more complex, exciting parts for women became available.

But this one’s really just a cocktail of great ingredients. Writer Richard Price and director Ron Howard do a really smart thing in that throughout all of these freakouts between the married couple with a kidnapped son, they give us a ton of tertiary time spent with such interesting characters as the hostage negotiator played by the always welcome, simultaneously warm and weary Delroy Lindo, a cop-turned-criminal-mastermind played by Gary Sinise, and various accomplices played by the likes of Lili Taylor, Liev Schreiber, and Donnie Wahlberg, all with their own differing motivations and commitment levels. Various tension threads intersect and run hot, cooking up thrilling clashes between victims, villains, deceivers, and middlemen. The most novel choice in the filmmaking that somehow works against all odds? You know who everyone is from square one. Dramatic irony all the way, taking a page out of Hitchcock’s book. Sometimes the classics are lionized for a reason. That doesn’t mean there aren’t twists, it just does away with the mystery box element that so many movies like this try to rely on sometimes to a fault.

This bevy of fine ‘90s actors, all doing the most in the best of ways, reaches its fever pitch during a particularly enraged late-stage phone negotiation between hero and villain. Mel Gibson’s character at one point utters the line, “I don't get my son back, and I mean real soon, you better kill yourself, because when I catch up with you, I'm gonna take my goddamn time. By the time we're finished, you're gonna wish you weren't born! I'll have your head on a fucking pike, do you understand me?”

Keep in mind that this movie was technically released by the Walt Disney Corporation. If that is not the most metal line ever spoken in a major studio motion picture, I don’t know what is. Mel’s fire and brimstone approach to the situation is met head on by a very determined Sinise, and it makes for truly edge-of-your-seat wonder. This is a script that will make you squirm in well-earned, yet also ultra-exclamatory, eye-popping fashion.

And with a critical eye in mind, one would be remiss not to touch on Howard’s action filmmaking. Not just action as in hand-to-hand and firearm combat, but action as onscreen drama. The violence itself is great, with glorious fruit-punch squibs and booming gunshots that you can feel even on your side of the screen. Every punch and squeeze of the trigger count, that’s for sure. But the way that the phone calls and characters’ realizations are shot and edited both carefully capture a group of clearly multifaceted actors with tremendous emoting abilities, but also manage to soak the whole thing in a desperate propulsion that makes you feel like you’ve been dropped into this sweaty, high-risk situation yourself. Without Howard cutting the way he does from face to face on each of the film’s signature negotiation phone calls, the movie would just be another DTV crime flick. But with Howard’s command of pace and his earnest focus on characters’ humanity, it comes off as much more of a thinking-man’s B+ ripper opposed to the forgettable B- bore it could have been.

Gibson delivers as usual, a who’s-who of overqualified actors and actresses back him up, and director Ron Howard puts a bow on the package with an eye for great faces, line delivery, and slam-bang drama setpieces. Ransom is pulpy ‘90s genre cinema at its most professional. The direction really can’t be overstated and everyone involved makes the most of what could have been cardboard characters in a cardboard suspense picture. It’s some of Howard’s best in a really respectably eclectic oeuvre; the guy has never been afraid to bounce between genres, that’s for sure. It’s just a bummer than Mel went off the deep end and isn’t in too many Hollywood projects anymore, because when he was picking A-list scripts and packages like this back in the late 20th Century, we were all sitting pretty being treated to awesome, uncomplicated blockbusters of his like Lethal Weapon, Payback, and Ransom.

8/10