Word: dutchness
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...that's pretty much all the news from Random Hearts, a grim and draggy romance in which even the clothes and sets are dismal. Ford is a Washington detective named Dutch Van Den Broeck; Scott Thomas is a Congresswoman named Kay Chandler. Both their spouses are killed in a plane crash, and he suspects--his obsessive nature and the habits of his profession driving him on--that they were lovers. She perhaps agrees, but prefers denial and resumption of her re-election campaign...
This is very sensible of her, especially in light of Dutch's maniacal pursuit of all the dreary details of the adulterous back story. This investigation of the painfully obvious is glum and endless and appears to have been designed by writer Kurt Luedtke (working from a Warren Adler novel) to show Dutch in the worst possible light. Apparently, though, Kay has a taste for sullen plodders. No other explanation is offered for her decision to enter into a brief, nervous affair with Dutch...
Later, in Hollywood, the fictional Morris becomes a hack screenwriter and spies Reagan and his soon-to-be first wife Jane Wyman on the beach: "This mature Dutch--'Ronnie' she calls him--is tall and sparely straight, constructed in flats, a mobile Mondrian... Even his pectorals are flat and square; he has no bulges in him, of brawn or brain...
...Reagan who emerges in Dutch is often of heroic dimension. But Morris is also acute and critical about the sometimes goofy, floating chimera who was President for eight years. Morris cites a former aide as saying that the President's attention span "would compare to that of a fruit fly." He tells the story of seeing President Reagan the morning after they had actually dined together at the Morris home: "Not only did he fail to mention our dinner, it was obvious from his smiling yet distant demeanor that he did not recall...
...Morris had a President who moved events. He seems to want to believe that to be true of Reagan as well. Morris says as much in the final, cloying scene of the book. He tells the reader that he himself was one of the people lifeguard Dutch saved from the river, and concludes: "Some day, I hoped, America might acknowledge her similar debt to the old Lifeguard who rescued her in a time of poisonous despair...