A forgotten Richard Gere vehicle from its prime is back in circulation

1983's "Honorary Consul" ended the actor's hot run at the box office and disappeared into obscurity, but a new physical media collection dedicated to its director suggests it deserves reevaluation.

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In 1983, Richard Gere was one of cinema's hottest heartthrobs thanks to a series of expertly executed sex roles in star vehicles. After garnering attention in Hollywood with supporting roles in Finding Mr. Goodbar and starring in Terrence Malick's Days of Heaven, Gere went on to star in Paul Schrader's blockbuster American Gigolo, followed by An Officer and a Gentleman.

"An Officer and a Gentleman" was a phenomenal hit, surpassed in 1982 only by "E.T." And Tootsie, and if Gere's follow-up, Jean-Luc Godard's obscure remake of Breathless, grossed significantly less, it was still a hit—and one for which Gere can take most of the credit, since most critics didn't seem to think there was much more to the film than a nude Valerie Gere and her co-star. (In recent years, the film has experienced a well-deserved reappraisal, spurred on by its most famous fan, Quentin Tarantino.) RELATED STORIES Street Fighter filmmaker Kitao Sakurai based his video game movie on Jolt Cola and Robert Altman II with The Batman Reduce II. Matt Reeves

The hot streak ended when he left after Breathe with The Honorable Consul, an adaptation of Graham Greene's 1973 novel that flopped at the box office, despite Paramount's best efforts to trick audiences into thinking it was another paean to sexuality rather than a thoughtful study of political machinations. For American audiences, the film was titled "Beyond" and Paramount created a poster depicting Gere in bed with a beautiful woman looming over him, an image similar to the recently released "Breathless" image.

The image wasn't exactly a lie — there are sex scenes between Geir's character Eduardo Polar and his friend Charlie Fortnum (Michael Caine), the young and beautiful husband of Clara (Elpidia Carrillo) — but the poster failed to convey what "Honorary Consul" was really about. As is typical of Greene's work, it is a tale of thorny moral issues, a love triangle between a British honorary consul in Argentina, his ex-prostitute wife and a brooding doctor, and an examination of the consequences of that triangle when the consul is mistakenly kidnapped by a revolutionary who thinks he is the American consul's ambassador.

Paramount's bait-and-switch marketing was a disaster. Straight women and gay men who came to the film to watch the tight body were not happy to see the many scenes of radicals being tortured in tubs full of excrement - and the viewers who were probably interested in the film. The film's complex moral reasoning assumed that it was just a nonsensical piece of soft-core pornography. So The Honorable Consul, aka Beyond the Limits, died at the box office, panned by critics (including Greene himself, who hated Gere's casting), and almost immediately fell into obscurity.

The film deserved better, but it wasn't even available for review for years - as far as I could tell, it never got a US physical release beyond the initial VHS pressing, and it wasn't even released in Greene's native UK and director John McKenzie's until 2019. Now, however, the Australian label has made Imprayrint as part of its full release. Directed by John McKenzie box set, worth buying for the Honorable Consul, but also happens to include some other great movies.

Mackenzie is a somewhat underrated figure, a Scottish filmmaker who worked as an assistant director with Ken Loach before starting his career making works of social realism for British film and television. He is best known today for the 1981 film The Long Good Friday, a thriller about a perfect criminal (Bob Hoskins in his first major film role) having the worst day of his life. Mackenzie beautifully captures London in the early days of Thatcher, using the setting to define and give depth to the film's ambitious and doomed protagonist. This is a film that honors Loach's political tradition but infuses it with the violent intensity and beats of the film genre.

"The Long Good Friday" joins Mackenzie's two films after "Honorary Consul," the Cold War thriller "The Fourth Protocol" and the JFK conspiracy thriller "Ruby." All four films demonstrate Mackenzie's skill at sharp social and political commentary, slightly enhanced by his flair as a playwright and ambient genre filmmaker, and all come with insightful complements.

"Honorary Console" is the true gem of the pack, as the most obscure and underrated version of the set and the one that most needs the type of context this set has to offer. The Blu-ray includes interviews with several key cast members detailing the film's history and its struggles, and there's an excellent audio commentary by writer Matthew Asprey Geer that not only discusses the making of "Honorable Console" but also the botched adaptation efforts that preceded it.

The most interesting version among them is the version proposed by Orson Welles, who played one of his most memorable roles in the script "The Third Man" written by Greene. In a nod to that film, Welles and co-writer Oja Kodar called their adaptation of The Honorary Consul "The Other Man," and it's interesting to consider Welles as Michael Caine and think about how this story fits into his films about betrayal and power.

When Welles' option fell through in 1978, producer Norma Heyman (the future mother of "Harry Potter" and "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood" producer David Heyman) took the rights and hired playwright Christopher Hampton to write a new screenplay. Hampton was well-placed to write about Englishmen out of their element in a foreign country, having visited Egypt, Yemen and Hong Kong when he was younger, and his 1973 play The Savages shares a number of elements with Greene's novel - although given that The Honorary Consul was released the same year, the similarities must be coincidental.

Hampton clearly had a knack for adapting British literary works, especially those with political or espionage elements. He wrote several adaptations of Joseph Conrad's books (including an adaptation of Nostromo for David Lean that was never filmed) and returned to Graham Greene for the 2002 version of The American Quiet - which, like The Honorable Consul, stars Michael Caine as an older man in a love triangle and a younger woman with a younger man. Hampton's screenplay for The Honorable Consul deftly weaves the complexities of Greene's novel into an efficient and beautiful drama that deftly portrays the intersecting characters and their shifting loyalties.

The script was strong enough to attract Gere and Cain, as well as Good Long Friday star Bob Hoskins, Mackenzie, who is terrific in The Consul as a scheming local police chief. Hoskins' performances are something special for McKenzie. The director knew how to take advantage of the actor's natural friendliness and cast him in sinister characters whose violent tendencies are enhanced by an infectious smile that hides the cruelty within. Kane, of course, is excellent as usual, bringing a mix of resignation and dignity to the well-intentioned loser he plays.

Caine's performance was widely praised, even by critics like Roger Ebert who didn't care for the film. The same cannot be said for Gere, who was admittedly misunderstood in several ways. First of all, the character in the book is tired and troubled, traits that Gerr plays but are offset by his natural confidence and charisma. More problematic was the inheritance of character. He's supposed to be half-English and half-Paraguayan, and to say he has a mismatched accent would be an understatement. Graham Greene rejected the film, largely based on what he saw as Gerr's unsuitability for the role.

While I can't entirely disagree with the criticisms, I think they don't take into account the real strengths of the game-changer as Eduardo Polar. He's another cool, likable Geir character, a trend that began with the ruthless opportunism of the runaway rancher in "Days of Paradise" and continued in "American Gigolo" and "Breathless." The men in these films are so self-absorbed they almost become sociopaths, though Julian Key has a last-minute redemption in "Gigolo" (motivated less by anything in the true story than by Paul Schrader's desire to remake "Pick Picker").

Even Gere's most overtly romantic lead role in "An Officer and a Gentleman," the film that cemented his status as a superstar, is often rowdy and awkward—Gere was never a movie star interested in begging for audience approval. That's what makes him interesting, and that's what makes him a good fit for Polar despite his struggles with the accent. Polar is willfully illegible and unsympathetic, cold and uncaring of his friend and the friend's wife he sleeps with, and his self-absorption suits him perfectly.

It also stands in convincing relief against Michael Caine's hot, alcoholic rival for Clara's affections. The scenes between the two men crackle with the tension that comes from seeing two equally powerful but stylistically contrasting screen presences collide. Greene's purists, as well as the author himself, raved about how Greene's actors transformed the story, but as pure drama, the film is fascinating - and a fascinating case study in how much a star character can affect a film. For example, if Hoskins and Gere had switched their roles, the film would have worked perfectly without changing a single line of dialogue - it would have been just as workable and completely different.

Interestingly, the actor Mackenzie was initially worried about was Michael Caine, who he thought was too classy to play Fortnum's Drunk. However, Keane quickly won Mackenzie over, and the director worked with him again on The Fourth Protocol and Quicksand. As for Gere, Mackenzie cast him before "An Officer and a Gentleman" was released, and when the film was in production, the film's success didn't hurt, as the studio suddenly became much more interested in Mackenzie's film than before, and the interference became the bane of Mackenzie's existence.

Like many people, the director himself didn't have a lot of positive things to say about Consul of Honor after the experience, and according to an interview on the Imprint disc with one of the film's editors, McKenzie even stepped away from the film for a while during post-production. Bad reviews, studio meddling and a disgruntled writer aside, however, The Honorable Consul remains a fascinating entry in Mackenzie, Gere and Kane's filmography, and its re-availability thanks to Imprint provides a welcome opportunity to explore its joys.

The Honorable Consul is available on Blu-ray as part of the Directed by John McKenzie box set, available now from Imprint.