Bovie Movie

When his army unit was ambushed during the first Gulf War, Sergeant Raymond Shaw saved his fellow soldiers just as his commanding officer, then-Captain Ben Marco, was knocked unconscious. Brokering the incident for political capital, Shaw eventually becomes a vice-presidential nominee, while Marco is haunted by dreams of what happened — or didn’t happen — in Kuwait. As Marco (now a Major) investigates, the story begins to unravel, to the point where he questions if it happened at all. Is it possible the entire unit was kidnapped and brainwashed to believe Shaw is a war hero as part of a plot to seize the White House? Some very powerful people at Manchurian Global corporation appear desperate to stop him from finding out.

Sandra Bullock plays a liberal lawyer who fights for environmental causes; Hugh Grant is a real estate tycoon who plans to knock down her local community centre in Coney Island to build condominiums — she agrees to work for him if he doesn’t go ahead with the demolition. So, the pair are thrown together in true romantic comedy tradition: opposites fighting an attraction. Bullock ends up running the hapless tycoon’s life — everything from handling his divorce to choosing his shirts — until she gets fed up, hands in her (two weeks) notice and quits. Will they overcome their differences and find a way back to each other? The formulaic plot is not the main problem here as even the best romantic comedies have genre conventions. It’s Bullock and Grant. Both natural, charming actors with the ability to play light comedy, they should have been the dream rom-com team, but they’re just trying too hard and with little result. All this effort only highlights that what really makes a screen romance work — a magical chemistry between the protagonists à la Tracy and Hepburn — is missing.