Conspiracy Theory is a 1997 American action/paranoid thriller film directed by Richard Donner. The original screenplay by Brian Helgeland centers on an eccentric taxi driver who believes many world events are triggered by government conspiracies.Jerry Fletcher (Mel Gibson) is a mentally unstable New York City taxi driver who lectures his passengers on various conspiracy theories. Jerry loves a girl but hasn't told her - he says "I have some problems..." One night as he is driving, the strobing lights of warning signals and a worker's arc welder trigger mysterious memories in Jerry's head (involving a mysterious doctor, a long needle, lights flashing on and off very fast, and "Chow Hound" clips) - Jerry goes crazy and almost crashes the cab. Jerry parks near the girl's apartment and watches her running on her treadmill while singing, finds the same radio station, and sings along. When he leaves, he stops to buy a stack of newspapers from Flip, a crippled Vietnam veteran. Jerry then parks by using his cab to shove another car away from a parking space and enters his apartment via a devious route. Jerry goes to work clipping and filing news articles and publishing a newsletter titled "Conspiracy Theory." The next morning he mails out the newsletter one copy at a time via letter boxes.
Jerry goes to the Justice Department, to visit the girl, Alice Sutton (Julia Roberts) who works for the DA. She is also trying to solve her father's murder, which had taken place some years earlier. Jerry tells her that NASA is trying to kill the President using a secret weapon on the Space Shuttle that can trigger earthquakes. Alice is patient with him but throws him out when he asks her out for a date.
Jerry IDs some men on the street as CIA, follows them into a building, and is captured by them. He wakes up in an unidentified building bound to a wheelchair with duct tape. A doctor (Patrick Stewart) tapes his eyes open, injects him with a drug he calls "Gravy for the brain" (LSD), and interrogates him using strobe lights and water torture. He wants to know who Jerry's been talking to. As the LSD kicks in Jerry remembers many previous sessions, which he sees as terrifying cartoons complete with very scary music (the "Chow Hound" bulldog is seen again in this harrowing scene). As the doctor leans closer, Jerry bites the doctor's nose and makes an amazing escape, still bound to the wheelchair. He crashes down stairs, breaking the wheelchair, which impales him with one of its parts. He shuts himself in a laundry truck, and as it drives away we see a sign that indicates that the building is a mental hospital. Jerry goes to Alice's office again and grabs a guard's gun, collapses in Alice's arms after babbling incoherently about biting off someone's nose.
Alice visits Jerry in the hospital. Handcuffed to the bed and drugged to force him to sleep, he pleads with her to switch his chart with that of a criminal in the next bed. He says if she doesn't do so, he will be dead by morning. In the morning, when Alice visits again, the criminal is dead, as he has suffered a mysterious heart attack during the night. The CIA, FBI and other agencies are there. She meets a mysterious CIA psychiatrist, Dr. Jonas, whose nose has been injured. Jonas tells Alice his dog bit it. Meanwhile Jerry fakes a heart attack and escapes again. Alice finds him and tells him of Jonas' claim about the dog. Jerry says "Arf." She frees him from his handcuffs; he drops down a linen chute and escapes.
Jonas quizzes Alice over lunch; she explains that Jerry saved her from muggers once, so she tolerates him. In Jerry's hospital room she finds a copy of The Catcher in the Rye. As she discusses it with an FBI officer named Lowry, the CIA come and confiscate all of Jerry's personal items. Lowry offers to share info with her but she declines.
The CIA cannot find Jerry. Alice goes to her car, and finds Jerry hiding in it. She loses Lowry who is tailing them, and then they go to Jerry's apartment where he tells her about his conspiracy theories and his newsletter. He has dozens of copies of Catcher - feels compelled to buy it, but doesn't know why. They are interrupted when Jerry's home-made alarm goes off, signaling the entry of a CIA SWAT team. Jerry sets everything on fire and they leave by his secret trapdoor exit. In the room below, there is a large mural on the wall, which features both Alice and the triple smokestacks of a factory near the mental institution.
They go to her apartment and he says something that reveals he's been watching her running on her treadmill. She kicks him out. Outside, Jerry confronts Lowry and his partner staking out her place, and he warns them not to hurt her. He goes to a book store and buys a copy of Catcher. The CIA detects his purchase, and sends agents to catch him. Jerry sees their black helicopters and men rappelling down, and like Lee Harvey Oswald, goes into a theater. He yells "there's a bomb under my chair" and manages to escape during the resultant panic.
The next morning Alice has been calling each person who gets the newsletter, and they all have all died that night except one. Jerry uses a ruse to get her out of the office, and then attaches cables from the CIA vehicle following her to a vendor's cart. On a bus they discuss more of his theories about "they" and "them." In a subway station where one Herriman drowned in another conspiracy, she agrees to check the autopsy. He says he loves her and she rejects him.
Alice goes to see the last surviving person on the subscription list, and it is Jonas. He explains that Jerry was an MK-ULTRA subject but the project was terminated - except for his research. Jonas shows her a photo of her father taken from Jerry's locker, and claims that Jerry went out of control and killed her father. She is crushed.
Jerry sends Alice a pizza and says to meet him. Jonas gets her to agree to a homing device in the pizza box and Jerry drives her with the box across the Queensboro bridge. He has made previous arrangements that enable him to ditch the agents following them, leaving the homing device behind. As he drives her to her father's private horse stables, he tells her that he can almost remember what happened and is taking her to where "the music is playing." Alice turns on her mobile phone so they can still track her. At the stables Jerry remembers that he was sent to kill her father (a judge who was about to expose Jonas' operation) but found he couldn't kill him. Instead they became friends and Jerry promised to watch over Alice before the judge was killed by another assassin. She admits she switched the charts in the hospital. The CIA arrive and capture Jerry. Jonas gloats but Jerry says, "you haven't seen her run." Alice outruns the men; a sniper misses her, killing the last guy chasing her, and she escapes.
Jonas tortures Jerry again. Meanwhile, Alice leads the FBI men (who are not actually FBI but from a "secret agency that watches the other agencies") to Jonas' office, but it has been entirely dismantled. She is determined to find Jerry because, she says, he would find her. She realizes that a detail of Jerry's large mural is near a mental hospital and goes there. She bribes an attendant to show her an unused wing, breaks in through locked doors, and finds Jerry after hearing him singing through the ventilation ducts. As Jonas catches them, Lowry arrives with his men and attacks Jonas's men. Jonas shoots Jerry and Alice shoots Jonas dead. Alice tells Jerry she loves him as he is taken away in an ambulance.
Some time later, Alice visits Jerry's grave. As she rides away we see Jerry, Lowry and Flip watching her. Jerry isn't allowed to contact her until they are sure they have rounded up all of Jonas' other subjects. He secretly lets her know he is still alive and the film ends.
- Mel Gibson as Jerry Fletcher
- Julia Roberts as Alice Sutton
- Patrick Stewart as Dr. Jonas
- Cylk Cozart as Agent Lowry
- Steve Kahan as Mr. Wilson
- Pete Koch as Fire Captain
- Dean Winters as Cleet
- Sean Patrick Thomas as Surveillance Operator
- Joan Lunden as TV Announcer
- Rick Hoffman as Night Security
- Richard Donner as Cab Passenger
The film was shot on location in and around New York City. Sites included Times Square, Union Square, Greenwich Village, the Queensboro Bridge, Roosevelt Island, and the Westchester Medical Center in Valhalla, New York.
The soundtrack includes "Just Maintain" by Xzibit, "Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic" by The Police, and two renditions of "Can't Take My Eyes Off You", one by Frankie Valli and the other by Lauryn Hill.
The film grossed $76,118,990 in the US and $61 million in foreign markets for a total worldwide box office of $137,118,990.
In her review in The New York Times, Janet Maslin said, "The only sneaky scheme at work here is the one that inflates a hollow plot to fill 2¼ hours while banishing skepticism with endless close-ups of big, beautiful movie-star eyes . . . Gibson, delivering one of the hearty, dynamic star turns that have made him the Peter Pan of the blockbuster set, makes Jerry much more boyishly likable than he deserves to be. The man who talks to himself and mails long, delusional screeds to strangers is not usually the dreamboat type . . . After the story enjoys creating real intrigue . . . it becomes tied up in knots. As with too many high-concept escapades, Conspiracy Theory tacks on a final half-hour of hasty explanations and mock-sincere emotion. The last scene is an outright insult to anyone who took the movie seriously at its start."
Lisa Schwarzbaum of Entertainment Weekly graded the film B- and commented, "Richard Donner . . . switches the movie from a really interesting, jittery, literate, and witty tone poem about justified contemporary paranoia (and the creatively unhinged dark side of New York City) to an overloaded, meandering iteration of a Lethal Weapon project that bears the not-so-secret stamp of audience testing and tinkering."
In the San Francisco Chronicle, Mick LaSalle stated, "If I were paranoid I might suspect a conspiracy at work in the promoting of this movie - to suck in audiences with a catchy hook and then give them something much more clumsy and pedestrian . . . Conspiracy Theory can be enjoyed once one gives up hope of its becoming a thinking person's thriller and accepts it as just another diversion . . . When all else fails, there are still the stars to look at - Roberts, who actually manages to do some fine acting, and Gibson, whose likability must be a sturdy thing indeed."
Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times observed the film "cries out to be a small film - a quixotic little indie production where the daffy dialogue and weird characters could weave their coils of paranoia into great offbeat humor. Unfortunately, the parts of the movie that are truly good are buried beneath the deadening layers of thriller cliches and an unconvincing love story . . . If the movie had stayed at ground level - had been a real story about real people - it might have been a lot better, and funnier. All of the energy is in the basic material, and none of it is in a romance that is grafted on like an unneeded limb or superfluous organ."
In Rolling Stone, Peter Travers said, "The strong impact that Gibson makes as damaged goods is diluted by selling Jerry as cute and redeemable. Instead of a scalding brew of mirth and malice, served black, Donner settles up a tepid latte, decaf. What a shame - Conspiracy Theory could have been a contender."
Todd McCarthy of Variety called the film "a sporadically amusing but listless thriller that wears its humorous, romantic and political components like mismatched articles of clothing . . . This is a film in which all things . . . are treated lightly, even glibly . . . One can readily sympathize with . . . the director's desire to inject the picture with as much humor as possible. But he tries to have it every which way in the end, and the conflicting moods and intentions never mesh comfortably."
On the film review website Rotten Tomatoes, the film only obtained 48% positive reviews among the 40 reviewers counted by the website in the "T-metric" system.
Michael Barkun, a political scientist specializing in the study of conspiracism in American culture, notes that a vast popular audience has been introduced by the film to the notion that the U.S. government is controlled by a secret team in black helicopters - a view once confined to right-wing extremists.
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