Details

Release year: 1991

Storyline

After a horrific car wreck leaves him an amnesiac, a man slowly begins to unravel his shocking past.

Top credits

Directors

Wolfgang Petersen

Writers

Cast

Tom Berenger — Dan Merrick
Bob Hoskins — Gus Klein
Greta Scacchi — Judith Merrick
Joanne Whalley — Jenny Scott

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Did you know

• Greta Scacchi's breakthrough role in Heat and Dust (1983) earned her a reputation for being relaxed about on-screen nudity. She had stripped down for scenes in Presumed Innocent (1990) and White Mischief (1987), among others, until she reached the edge of her tolerance with this movie. "There I was, in the missionary position," she would later say, "with the fourth famous actor in six months on top of me--Harrison Ford, Vincent D'Onofrio, Jimmy Smits, now Tom Berenger--and I'm thinking, 'I just can't do this anymore'."

• The car crash was filmed using a custom-built "gun" with a compressed-gas thrust of 1,400 pounds, which sent a Mercedes 560SL sailing 200 feet off a cliff before it fell more than 500 feet. Recording the action were six cameras, several manned by rope-secured technicians experienced in climbing rock faces to get into pivotal positions. Camera crews lower down the cliff had to be put in place with their equipment by a heavy-duty helicopter capable of lifting 2,000 lbs.

• Publicity for the picture, including the review in the show-business trade paper "Variety", often mistakenly attributed this 1991 movie as being the first Hollywood production directed by German director Wolfgang Petersen, but this is not the case; around six years earlier Petersen had directed Enemy Mine (1985) for 20th Century-Fox, although it was filmed almost entirely in Germany.