member of the 'internet movie critics association' <a href= " http : //www . geocities . com/hollywood/studio/5713/index . html " >http : //www . geocities . com/hollywood/studio/5713/index . html</a> member of the 'online film critics society' <a href= " http : //smart . sbay . com/ofcs/ " >http : //smart . sbay . com/ofcs/</a> tom cruise , #3 on the list of box office stars who have generated the most income for the studios at a take of 1 . 51 billion dollars . tom hanks , #2 at 1 . 52 billion and harrison ford is #1 with a take of 2 . 08 billion dollars . after all the years harrison ford has been around , i've never seen a guy who can be so likable , even when he makes a bad movie . born in 1942 , his early roles in 'american graffiti' ( 1973 ) and 'the conversation' ( 1974 ) had him in gear as an interesting looking character actor who was about the same age as i am now . then , of course , his breakthrough film , 'star wars' , had him engulfed in the full context of success and the phrase , " never looking back " , can rarely be applied as strongly as in the case of ford , who later took on the challenge of a leading man and 'raiders of the lost ark' made him a full fledged superstar . thankfully , tom selleck's schedule made him unavailable as indiana jones and stories i've read from multiple sources said harrison ford was oliver stone's first choice to play jim garrison in 'jfk' . 'six days , seven nights' has ford under the direction of ivan reitman , the man who made arnold schwarzenegger funny in such films as 'twins' , 'kindergarten cop' and 'junior' . too bad sylvester stallone's voyage into comedy was a disaster . maybe reitman can do something for his career later on . in 'six days , seven nights' , ford looks entirely like an everyday common man playing his role with a likable quality in a mediocre film . ford plays a somewhat broken down commercial pilot who lives in the south pacific who meets a new york city magazine editor ( anne heche ) and her fiancee ( david schwimmer ) . he flies them to their eventual destination and heche and ford later travel alone as heche's boss asks her to interrupt her vacation and make a 15-hour stop over in tahiti to do a magazine layout . as they are flying , a violent storm kicks up forcing them to turn back and upon doing so , the plane is struck by lightning and they crash land on a deserted island in a 'gilligan's island' type of scenario . spoiled with her bottled water , business lunches and nyc lifestyle , heche can't comprehend this disaster and asks ford what he's going to do . there are some clever lines as ford talks about the plane's landing gear and says : " sure , i'll just glue it back on " . her sarcasm is not to be out done as she says : " i've flown with you twice and you've crashed half the time " . her best line is when she asks ford if he's " one of those guys . those handy guys who , when you give them a pocket knife and a q-tip , they build you a shopping mall . " their isolation on the island puts them into an unpleasant confrontation with some modern day pirates . they also deal with the conflict of each other's opposite tendencies , the humourous pratfalls of inexperience in their situation and the unexpected situations in nature . i couldn't quite get my mind around the fact that i was watching some scenes straight out of movies such as 'butch cassidy and the sundance kid' , 'romancing the stone' and others and while pleasant enough in content , the movie is a one time deal you want want to re-visit and while ford isn't quite upstaged by his female companion , heche is still more believable in her role and gives a better performance . i was surprised . 
