Conspiracy Theory ** (1997, Mel Gibson, Julia Roberts, Patrick Stewart) – Classic Movie Review 11,378

Director Richard Donner’s 1997 American political action thriller Conspiracy Theory stars Mel Gibson as an eccentric New York cab driver, Jerry Fletcher, convinced that every event, object and coincidence warns of conspiracy, and that he is the target.

Julia Roberts also stars as Alice Sutton, a bright Justice Department attorney who thinks that he is a kind of sweet nut until he shows her that she too is the target of a deadly conspiracy. Patrick Stewart plays CIA psychiatrist Dr Jonas, an enigmatic doctor (ie the villain) who pursues them in a run for their lives.

Attractive stars lead this pounding thriller from the director (Richard Donner) and producers (Richard Donner and Joel Silver) of the Lethal Weapon series. The original screenplay by Brian Helgeland is a hollow contrivance, with ideas borrowed from The Manchurian Candidate (which it has the cheek to mention) and Three Days of the Condor, and a mountain of implausibilities capped by a hill of impossibilities, but it is played for more than its worth by Gibson and socked along energetically by Donner.

An older, tireder looking Gibson in a variant of his Lethal Weapon role tries to make strange attractive – mostly successfully – but Roberts and Stewart are less successful in their one-note, rather under-developed roles.

There are several exciting set pieces, but these are offset by as many bungled ones and an extremely irritating cheat ending.

Also in the cast are Cylk Cozart, Steve Kahan, Terry Alexander, Alex McArthur, George Aguilar, Saxon Trainor, Claudia Stedelin, Donal Gibson, Peter Koch, Kevin Jackson and Sean Patrick Thomas.

Scenes at the horse farm were filmed at Lionshare Farm in Greenwich, Connecticut, whose owner, US Equestrian Team member Peter Leone, coached Julia Roberts.

Despite mixed reviews, Conspiracy Theory was a hit. It was released on 8 August 1997, cost $80 million and went on to take a worldwide total of $136,982,834 in cinemas.

© Derek Winnert 2021 Classic Movie Review 11,378

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