Medicine Man is a 1992 American adventure drama film directed by American action director John McTiernan. The film stars Sean Connery and Lorraine Bracco, and features an acclaimed score by veteran composer Jerry Goldsmith.

Plot

The pharmaceutical company Aston Laboratories sends biochemist Dr. Rae Crane into the Amazonian rainforest to locate researcher Robert Campbell, after his wife and research partner abandon him. Crane is bringing equipment and supplies, but Campbell is upset the research partner is not forthcoming. He tries to send Crane home, but she demurs, as she has been assigned to determine whether Campbell s research deserves continued funding.

Campbell has found a cure for cancer , but attempts to synthesize the compound have failed. With supplies of the successful serum running low, Campbell isolates a derivative of a species of flower from which the formula can be synthesized and with Crane s help is determined to find its source. Campbell earns the title medicine man of the village by giving a boy with a stomach ache Alka Seltzer, insulting the real medicine man and driving him deep into the forest. A logging company is building a road headed straight for the village, threatening to expose the native population to potentially lethal foreign pathogens, as has happened before. In fact, Campbell s wife left him because he could not forgive himself for the tragedy.

A small boy appears with malignant neoplasms and Campbell, Crane, the boy, and his father set out in search of Campbell s predecessor, a medicine man from whom Campbell once acquired his knowledge of flowers. Upon encountering Campbell s entourage, the medicine man flees in fear. Though he is reluctant to pursue the man further, Crane convinces him circumstances demand that he must. Campbell rescues Crane from a fall, then locates the medicine man, whom he is compelled to fight in order to heal the medicine man s wounded pride and gain further necessary information. Unfortunately, the medicine man reveals that the flowers have no juju —power to heal. Father and son agree to return another time. Back at the village, Crane initially refuses to allow Campbell to inoculate the boy with the last of the serum until more can be synthesized. But when the boy s condition worsens, she gives in and the boy is inoculated.

The next morning, the boy is better but the village is in tumult. The logging road is nearly finished. Campbell appeals to the company s workers to halt construction until he can conclude his research, but it refuses. In desperation and after new samples fail to contain the missing compound, Crane runs the chromatograph one more time and accidentally discovers that the source of the cure is not the flower but a species of rare ant indigenous to the rainforest. Campbell demands the construction stop. A fight results and a bulldozer catches fire, destroying the village and the research station along with many acres of rainforest.

The next day, Crane promises to send Campbell new equipment and the research assistant he d originally requested. She is about to return home when she meets the medicine man. He symbolically passes on his mantle to Campbell, and Crane accepts an invitation to continue working with him in exchange for recognition for co-discovering the source of the compound.

Cast

• Sean Connery as Dr. Robert Campbell
• Lorraine Bracco as Dr. Rae Crane
• José Wilker as Dr. Miguel Ornega
• José Lavat as Government Man

Production

Tom Schulman s script was purchased for $2.5 million with a further $1 million spent on rewrites by Sally Robinson and Tom Stoppard.

Production started March 4, 1991 in the Mexican jungle near Catemaco and was completed in July. Connery and Bracco both complained of conditions on set.

Soundtrack

Medicine Man
Film score by Jerry Goldsmith
Released	February 4, 1994
Recorded	1994
Genre	Soundtrack
Length	50:09

The music for Medicine Man was composed and conducted by veteran composer Jerry Goldsmith. The score, a blend of orchestra, synthetic elements, and guitar solos, was praised by critics and is considered one of the film s strengths. The soundtrack was released February 4, 1994 through Varèse Sarabande and features fourteen tracks.

Reception

Box office

The film premiered at the El Capitan Theatre in Los Angeles on February 5, 1992. It was released in 1,304 theatres on February 7, 1992.

The film debuted at number 1 at the US box office with $8.5 million. The following week it was knocked out of the top spot by Wayne s World. The film eventually grossed $45.5 million domestically, earning Disney $21 million, just half of its budget.

Critical response

The film was panned by most critics, especially Bracco s performance. On Rotten Tomatoes the film has an approval rating of 17% rating based on 23 reviews. Audiences surveyed by CinemaScore gave the film a grade of B+ on scale of A+ to F.

Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave it 1.5 out of 4 and wrote: All of the elements are here for a movie I would probably enjoy very much, but somehow they never come together and If this had been some dumb adventure movie, it would probably have been terrific. Owen Gleiberman of Entertainment Weekly wrote It s not every day you get to see a performance as bad as Lorraine Bracco s in Medicine Man and Connery doesn’t do much he hasn t done before . Gleiberman praised some moments where the film becomes the dazzling true-life jungle saga it clearly wants to be but is critical of the plot which he says is built around some very tired devices and The race-against-the-clock structure is a flimsy conceit . He gave it a grade C+.Variety called it An indelicate attempt to create some African Queen-style magic while curing cancer and saving the rainforests in the bargain, this jumbo-budget two-character piece suffers from a very weak script and a lethal job of miscasting.

About the film s lackluster performance, John McTiernan said: It was a little art movie with Sean Connery that cost only $27 million. If the press hadn t defined it as an action movie, it probably wouldn t have been considered a disappointment.

Lorraine Bracco s performance in the film earned her a nomination for the Golden Raspberry Award for Worst Actress.

Year	1992
ReleaseDate	1992-02-07
RuntimeMins	106
RuntimeStr	1h 46min
Plot	In the beautiful and dangerous Amazon rainforest, dissimilar people must make their choices between business, science, and love.
Awards	Awards, 1 nomination
Directors	John McTiernan
Writers	Tom Schulman, Sally Robinson
Stars	Sean Connery, Lorraine Bracco, José Wilker
Produced by	Sean Connery,Craig B. Coogan,Donna Dubrow,Beau Marks,Andrew G. Vajna
Music by	Jerry Goldsmith
Cinematography by	Donald McAlpine
Film Editing by	Michael R. Miller
Casting By	Bonnie Timmermann
Production Design by	John Krenz Reinhart Jr.
Art Direction by	Jesus Buenrostro,Don Diers
Set Decoration by	Enrique Estévez
Costume Design by	Marilyn Vance
Makeup Department	Raúl Sarmiento
Production Management	Roberto Bakker,Joel Marx,Anna Roth,Tamara Smith,Jerry Sobul
Second Unit Director or Assistant Director	Guillermo ‘Memo’ Carreno,Caíque Martins Ferreira,David Kelley,Thomas J. Mack,Batan Silva,Fred Waugh
Art Department	René Marquéz,Hugo A. Reyes,Tommy Tomlinson,Ben Zeller,Carl Zeller
Sound Department	George H. Anderson,Douglas B. Arnold,Cindy Bassman,Chris David,Christopher Flick,Tommy Goodwin,Tim Song Jones,Maciek Malish,Cindy Marty,Thomas P. McNamara,Darren Polish,Sergio Reyes,Norman B. Schwartz,Roy Seeger,Tami Treadwell,Hugo Weng
Special Effects by	Jose A. Cordero,Laurencio Cordero,Michael Garcia,Dean Lockwood,J.J. Makaro,John Thomas,Mike Weis
Visual Effects by	Joel Hynek
Stunts	Gustavo Campos,Jorge Luis Corzo,Júlio Martínez,John Saint Ryan,Gil Torres,Rafael Valdez,Jennifer Watson-Johnston,Fred Waugh
Camera and Electrical Department	Robert Agganis,Paulo Brakarz,Phil Bray,Jesus ‘Moroco’ Gonzalez,Darrin Keough,Brett Laumann,Steve Mathis,Paul Sibley,Tim Stratton
Costume and Wardrobe Department	Hans Georg Struhar
Editorial Department	Dale E. Grahn,Ann-Giselle Spiegler,John W. Stuart,Ed Stabile
Location Management	Flavio Chaves,Nicole Kolin,Fernando Serzedelo,Emilia Arau
Music Department	Jerry Goldsmith,Kenneth Hall,Junior Homrich,Mike Ross-Trevor,John Beal,Arthur Morton,National Philharmonic Orchestra,Allen Walley
Script and Continuity Department	Tom Stoppard
Transportation Department	Arturo Curiel
Additional Crew	Michael Carter,Mary Lou Devlin,Emily Gamboa,Humberto Gurza,Miguel Gurza,Yvette Gurza,Junior Homrich,Tracy L. Kettler,Pat Loveall,Ann-Giselle Spiegler,Fátima Toledo,Andrew G. Vajna
Genres	Adventure, Drama, Romance
Companies	Hollywood Pictures, Cinergi Pictures Entertainment
Countries	USA
Languages	English
ContentRating	PG-13
ImDbRating	6
ImDbRatingVotes	23552
MetacriticRating	43
Keywords	jungle,environmental issue,indigenous people,stethoscope exam,aerial camera shot