Ruby Cairo (1993)

Pretty Good

A Major Disappointment

This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

Blistering performances.

Being in the USA, I know this film under the title, "Deception."The first half of this movie was very good, very interesting, but the final segment was a big, big disappointment. Overall, it's kind of a strange, confusing story yet fascinating for the most part. I liked the baseball card angle, even if most other people didn't.When "Bessie Faro" a.k.a. "Rubie Cairo" (Andie MacDowell) finally finds her husband, the film goes to pieces.The scenery is great to view - scenes from Veracruz, Berlin, Athens and capped off by some magnificent shots of the Great Pyramids outside Cairo. Liam Neeson did his normal superb acting job and creating a likable character.Boy, this could have been a super movie with a much-different and better done finale. The premise and the scenery were the highlights; the script, the lowlight. However, I'll think you'll find overall it's still a lot better than the national critics would have you believe. It's worth a look. Just expect the film to go downhill the last third.

This film is pretty to watch, but it adds nothing new to the genre; the plot is silly as there is almost no logic in what we are watching. From the opening scenes we know this film is something by the numbers because there is no real suspense; it fails to make sense about what we are watching.The only thing this movie has going is the different locales in which the director, and his crew, decided to take us: Veracruz, Berlin, Athens, Cairo. All in pursuit of the illusive Johnny Faro, the two timing man without scruples.The stars are wasted. Let's hope they had a good time while they were in location.

Run of the mill thriller which has a woman searching high and low for a missing hubby thought to have been killed in a plane crash. A few old baseball cards provided clues to a mysterious humanitarian aid group and finally leads her to a country in Africa where all questions were answered.

Ruby Cairo would have been an okay movie, if they had re-written the scripts, gotten a better screenplay, etc. I thought the acting was a little too good for the movie. But the whole thing was a bust. I was utterly disappointed in Viggo Mortensen's performance.