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Thursday, 08 July 2004 |
  After a fairly recent explosion of new young actresses, the dust is beginning to settle and a few standouts are appearing. Mandy Moore is clearly one of those standouts. What the future holds for this talented and attractive young woman will depend on how she handles her career, how she is accepted in the bizarre society of Hollywood and the actual range of her skill.
Chasing Liberty is a fairly standard, formula piece of mainstream filmmaking. Five years ago it would have starred Reese Witherspoon, but today, Mandy Moore is wisely chosen for the bright and irresistible main character. Moore plays Anna Foster, the teen age daughter of U.S. President James Foster (Mark Harmon) who has just about had it with the Secret Service detail that follows her every move. Anna wants a little freedom to be a teenager and good old dad is less than willing to grant it. Her patience reaches its end when she is finally asked out by the "right" guy. During their date at a swanky restaurant, a group of teens walks up to the table and one of them reaches into his coat pocket. Literally half the patrons of the restaurant, actually all Secret Service agents, jump out of their seats and tackle the young man, who just wanted to get a picture.
Anna, with the help of her mother, persuades her father to give her a bit more freedom during a trip to Prague, where she will go to some public events with the French Premiere's daughter. Unfortunately, once dad meets the daughter, with her low cut dress and studded tongue, he changes his mind and sends an entire squad of agents to secretly follow Anna. Of course, once she is at a rock concert and notices suspicious looking characters spaced throughout the venue, she catches on to dad's deceit and decides to skip town. Unknown to her, Ben Calder (Matthew Goode) the young man she recruits to help is also an agent and must keep her out of danger without revealing his true identity.
Anna and Ben traverse Europe as two other agents Weiss and Morales (Jeremy Piven & Annabella Sciorra) try to keep tabs on both of them. There are two romantic story lines as both Anna and Ben, as well as Weiss and Morales battle their mutual attractions. Ben is drawn to Anna, but also terrified of what will happen to him if he acts on his desires. Anna is drawn to Ben, but is also simply interested in doing all those things she shouldn't be doing.
This standard setup has pretty much the standard resolution. It has been done a thousand times before. Still, when it is done this well and with as charismatic actors as Mandy Moore and Matthew Goode, it will always be worth the price of admission. A pleasant bonus is the night the couple is put up in Venice by the mother of their gondolier, played by the wonderful actress Miriam Margolyes, who is most well known as Claire Danes' nurse in Baz Luhrmann's adaptation of Romeo and Juliet. Every moment Margolyes is on screen is a pleasure.
With each role she chooses, Mandy Moore manages to increasingly temper the almost unbelievably sweet aspect that seems to be an intrinsic part of her personality. Her performance in the 2002 film A Walk to Remember was charming almost to the point of being repulsive. In Chasing Liberty this trait is much more palpable. As her range grows and she learns to play more dimensional characters, I expect Moore will become a genuine superstar. She is not the marketing juggernaut Lindsay Lohan currently is, and I doubt she is capable of the depth and almost chameleon like quality of Alison Lohman, but I expect she will achieve levels of commercial success that will leave both of them in her dust. In 10 years or so, I have no doubt she will have reached the likes of Julia Roberts which would not only make her a household name, but an outrageously wealthy woman. Hey, Roberts even has a Best Acting Oscar.
Starring: Mandy Moore, Matthew Goode, Jeremy Piven, Anabella Sciorra, Mark Harmon, Beatrice Rosen.
Director: Andy Cadiff
Studio: Warner Brothers
Rated: PG-13
Running Time: 102 minutes
Release: 2003
Reviewer: John Rice |
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