HOLLYWOOD -- Director Taylor Hackford was determined to make his hostage drama Proof of Life as authentic as possible.

Proof of Life, now showing in Calgary, is set in a fictional South American country.

A terrorist group kidnaps an American engineer (David Morse) who is working on the construction of a dam.

They mistook him for an employee of an American oil company, assuming they could get $5 million US for his safe return.

The engineer's wife (Meg Ryan) hires a negotiator (Russell Crowe) who specializes in international kidnap and ransom cases.

"This story takes place in the Andes. I was determined to go there to film it, and Ecuador is the safest country in that area," says Hackford, whose films include An Officer and a Gentleman, Against All Odds, White Nights, Dolores Claiborne and The Devil's Advocate.

"Warner Bros. was always very hesitant to let me go to South America. They wanted me to film in Mexico, but I prevailed and they ultimately relented."

It took just a few days of actually being in the mountains of Ecuador with his cast and crew for Hackford to get a glimpse of just how harrowing being in his dream location would prove.

"Making this movie ended up being trial by fire," he says.

"It turned out to be the wettest season they'd had in 40 years. We had rain and mudslides to contend with on a near-daily basis."

The locations Hackford had chosen were high in the Andes with a steep, winding road as the only access.

A few weeks before Hackford and his crew arrived, a group of terrorists from neighbouring Colombia crossed the border and murdered dozens of villagers just to show their strength and power.

"We had to hire protection for our people and there were police patrols all along the road."

There were no further incidents involving the Colombians, but the road still proved treacherous.

One day Morse's stand-in, Will Gafney, was killed in an accident when the truck he was in went off the road and rolled down a hill.

"It was a real tragedy because it was an accident without reason," says Hackford.

"It was a dry, sunny day and the truck was going very slow. There was no reason for the rollover to have happened."

There were five other people in the truck, but only Gafney was killed.

"Will was not hired in Los Angeles. He was already living in Ecuador with his wife. He was a teacher who looked enough like David to be his stand-in."

Morse was not in Ecuador when the accident happened. He had returned to New York to film additional scenes for the Jamie Foxx drama Bait.

"I was supposed to do that scene, but I got called back to New York, so I will always live with the knowledge that it could have been me," says Morse.

David Caruso, who plays one of Crowe's fellow negotiators, says he and Crowe met with actual kidnap and ransom negotiators.

"These guys are the most able people in the world. They are former CIA operatives, military personnel and former members of Britain's elite SAS," says Caruso.

What amazed Caruso the most was that "you could never pick one of these guys out in a crowd. They've learned to blend.

"These guys are so effective that kidnappers don't want them in their countries.

"All of us who portray them in Proof of Life felt a huge obligation to make them appear as heroic as they really are."


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