The film, based partly on a Vanity Fair article by William Prochnau, stars Russell Crowe as a professional negotiator and Meg Ryan as the wife of an American engineer who is kidnapped in the made-up South American country of Tecala. In the smashing, vertiginous opening-credit sequence, our hero sits in a pristine, ultra-modern London office and blandly recounts a blistering exploit rescuing a Frenchman in Chechnya. The mission unfolding in flashback on-screen depicts a realm in which deals are brokered, and broken, with bullets.

Always superb at serious play, Crowe deadpans his way through his boardroom presentation while we see him in Chechnya, hanging from a helicopter by his fingertips. In general, Crowe is never more there on-screen than when a script gives him some wiggle room, allowing him to suggest a distance between what he says with his eyes and with his mouth. It's his constant potential for righteous fury, mischief and unexpected sensitivity that makes him so magnetic. "Proof of Life" plops him down in a ruthless, rootless milieu that tests his wits and mettle.

Crowe's character has to be as direct in his connections to his client as he is wary of his employers and slippery with his antagonists. It's an oscillating line for Crowe to toe -- and he does it without tripping once. When his character approaches the distraught and angry Ryan, he convinces her to trust him without hesitation. She does -- and we do, too.

Crowe makes competence look sexy. At his best, with his combination of ironclad irony and bedrock honesty, Crowe is like an improbable blend of Humphrey Bogart and Gary Cooper: the cynic as nature's nobleman.

Crowe responds to Ryan's plea for help first as an assignment, then as a point of honor. Ryan's husband (David Morse) has been building a dam that he hopes will better the lot of the Tecalan people. The junky flunkies of a group of guerrilla drug lords kidnap him for a hefty ransom right after he and Ryan have a foul marital spat. (She suffered a miscarriage on a previous stint in Africa; their relationship has never recovered.)

Morse's Houston employers are teetering toward bankruptcy and have canceled their kidnapping insurance. So after Crowe comes to Morse's rescue, his higher-ups pull him back. He returns to Tecala as a freelancer.

This initial switchback sets off a smoke-and-mirrors alarm in the audience. The director, Taylor Hackford ("Dolores Claiborne"), knows how to pace and texture melodrama, but too many things happen simply so that other things can happen. The first half hour is filled with one-note scenes geared to explain why Crowe and Morse fall out with their respective companies. Being men on their own intensifies each guy's drama. But it takes too much sweat and tears for the film to reach its desired peak of urgency.

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