Volunteers (film)
| Volunteers | |
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The movie cover for Volunteers.
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| Directed by | Nicholas Meyer |
| Produced by |
Walter F. Parkes Richard Shepherd |
| Written by |
Keith F. Critchlow David Isaacs Ken Levine |
| Starring | |
| Music by | James Horner |
| Distributed by | TriStar Pictures |
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Release date
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Running time
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107 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $25 million |
| Box office | $19,875,740 |
Volunteers is a 1985 American comedy film directed by Nicholas Meyer and starring Tom Hanks and John Candy in their second film together after Splash (1984).
Lawrence Bourne III (Tom Hanks), is a spoiled rich kid who just graduated from Yale ("A College") Class of 1962; with a $28,000 gambling debt. After his father, Lawrence Bourne Jr. (George Plimpton), refuses to pay his son's debt, Lawrence escapes his angry creditors by trading places with his college roommate Kent (Xander Berkeley) and jumping on a Peace Corps flight to Thailand.
There he is assigned to build a bridge for the local villagers with Washington State University graduate Tom Tuttle from Tacoma (John Candy) and the beautiful, down-to earth Beth Wexler (Rita Wilson). What they do not realize is that the bridge is coveted by the Central Intelligence Agency, a local communist force, and the powerful drug lord Chung Mee (Ernest Harada).
The film was in the works for six years before it was made. Volunteers was filmed in Tuxtepec, Oaxaca, Mexico. The filmmakers built a Thai village based on the Karen people of Burma's Golden Triangle, building the world's "longest suspension bridge" which was more than 250 yards long. A cast of over 100 people from all over the world, including Thai families, spent two and a half months filming.
Meyer states that the director of the Peace Corps, Sargent Shriver, read the script and complained that it "was like spitting on the American flag," and demanded changes. The changes were never made, but by the time the film was released, Shriver was no longer director, and Peace Corps officials were willing to endorse the movie.
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Wikipedia