This ecological drama deals about Dr Robert Campbell(Sean Connery), he's a biochemist working in the Amazon rain forest on a cancer cure. There arrives a scientific, Dr Crane(Lorraine Bracco), a researcher sent by the laboratory sponsoring. Campbell has found a cure but he has been unable to duplicate it . Then they seek desperately the missed flower about being eradicated by civilization. Meanwhile, a Bulldozers sweeping the jungle and time is running out.

The movie contains ecological adventure, an enjoyable relationship and breathtaking outdoors. In spite of Dr Campbell is grumpy and Dr Crane is obstinate, arise an agreeable chemical between them. The film is quite entertaining with some moments a little boring, but that doesn't detract for your amusement of a well-developed tale where drama, love and adventures mingle splendidly. Colorful cinematography reflecting marvellously the Amazon rain forest by Donald McAlpine. Sensible,sensitive musical score by the great Jerry Goldsmith, wonderfully appropriate when the protagonists climbed up to the top of the tallest trees in the Brazilian jungle. The picture is lavishly produced by Andrew G Vagna with his Carolco company and by Sean Connery. The motion picture is well directed by John McTiernan. He's an action expert director with hits, such as ¨Predator, Die Hard and sequels¨, and some flop, such as ¨Nomads and Thomas Crown¨. Rating : Acceptable and passable, the film will like to Sean Connery fans and ecology buffs.

Eccentric scientist Dr. Robert Campbell (Sean Connery) asks for an assistant and a gas chromatograph after 3 years of silence in the Amazon jungle. The drug company sends Dr. Rae Crane (Lorraine Bracco) who is out of her elements. She finds Campbell completely immersed with the natives. She's actually there to judge his progress and whether or not to cut off funding. He believes that he has found a cure for cancer. Only he can't reproduce it and the bulldozers are coming.

I think people missed the fact that this is very much a formulaic rom-com. The serious matter of cancer cure and Amazon destruction masks that fact from almost everybody. The formula is simple. They hate each other and then they fall in love. I actually find Lorraine Bracco hilariously adorable but I guess most people found her annoying. Not everybody likes a woman who talks back. Jerry Goldsmith's music is memorable as always. This is a fun rom-com if one lets it be. And climbing among the trees is visually stunning.

Although the premise of this film is quite odd, Medicine Man is an entertaining film that has a great deal to say about what we're doing to primitive people and what setbacks we're giving ourselves in a greedy pursuit of the almighty dollar. Sean Connery and Lorraine Bracco and the rest of the native cast shot this film in some of the tropical areas of Mexico near Vera Cruz which substituted nicely for the Amazon rain forest. No more back lot jungles for films any longer.

Sean Connery is a research scientist working among some of the primitives in the Amazon and Lorraine Bracco is sent from the foundation that funds Connery to check his progress. It seems as though Dr. Connery has mislaid a cure for cancer he just might have discovered. He got the cure from the advice of the tribe medicine man who pointed him in the direction of a flowering plant that only grows at the tree tops in the rain forest. He made a batch of serum that worked and hasn't been able to duplicate it, nor find another source of these plants.

Connery's search for the elusive plant reminded me of a scene in the John Ford classic The Horse Soldiers. William Holden played a doctor who prescribed a poultice of tree moss to cure an infection that was given him by a Cheyenne medicine man. John Wayne thinks Holden's been smoking some other Indian product, but as even us high school biology students are aware, penicillin is a byproduct of mold from tree moss. Holden didn't doubt its results and neither does Connery in his work.

The problem is that the Brazilian government is looking to bulldoze the area to create a road. And Bracco's foundation is threatening to pull the plug on the funding.

Connery is fine as the iconoclastic doctor who with his beard and long hair, when he doesn't have it in a ponytail, Sean looks like Buffalo Bill. According to the Citadel Film Series book on the Films Of Sean Connery, he and Bracco did not have an easy time of it, but they got through the film.

Although it would really help to have more a knowledge of biology and chemistry when Connery and Bracco get technical, Medicine Man is still a film that can be enjoyed by the lay person.