MEDICINE MAN. Buena Vista, 1992. Sean Connery, Lorraine Bracco, José Wilker, Rodolfo de Alexandre. Director: John McTiernan.

   When a biochemist who’s isolated himself in the Brazilian rain forest for several years finally finds a flower which promises to be a universal cure for cancer, he has to call on his supporting foundation for help. He can’t duplicate his results. They send a woman. She’s his superior. He’s cantankerous and crabby; she’s young and feisty. Sparks fly almost immediately.

   Predictable, you say, and I wouldn’t disagree. But I’d watch Sean Connery in anything, including a ponytail, and that his character would fall for someone who can stand up to him like Sr. Crane from the Bronx, that certainly comes as no surprise at all. The scenery is what’s really magnificent, however, even on the TV screen, without Panavision.

PostScript:   I seem to have missed he boat on this one. Both Maltin and Scheuer agree, for once, that as far as this movie concerned, Lorraine Bracco is an absolute disaster. Reluctantly, given only the presence of Sean Connery in the film, do they finally each give it two and a half stars.

   Scheuer calls her “frenzied,” while Maltin settles for “abrasive.” I think that since (so far as I know) Katharine Hepburn never played a research scientist, Lorraine Bracco is as close as the movies have ever come to portraying an attractive woman with brains, that’s what I think.