Eureka

Eureka is a 1983 psychological drama film directed by Nicolas Roeg, and starring Gene Hackman, Rutger Hauer, Theresa Russell, Mickey Rourke, and Joe Pesci. It follows the life of a Klondike prospector who becomes one of the world's wealthiest men after striking gold in 1925, but, 20 years on, fears that he is being preyed upon by his daughter and her social-climbing husband, as well as a mobster attempting to usurp the Caribbean island he owns. The screenplay is loosely based on the unsolved murder of Sir Harry Oakes in the Bahamas in 1943. Eureka was filmed in 1982 in England, the United States, Canada, and Jamaica, on a budget of $11 million. It received a theatrical release in England in May 1983, though its distributor, United Artists, temporarily shelved the film from release in the United States, as they were unsure how to properly market it to the public. Furthermore, it was granted an X rating in the United States for its graphic depictions of violence. It was eventually given a limited release in Los Angeles in the fall of 1984. The film was a box-office bomb, and received mixed reviews from critics. Plot In 1925 in the Yukon, prospector Jack McCann spends the evening in a remote brothel, where he has a spiritual experience with the madam, Frieda, a clairvoyant who bestows him a mysterious stone. Frieda warns Jack that he will strike gold, but that it will lead him toward a grim fate. The following morning, while prospecting, Jack falls through a glacier into a cache of gold beneath. Jack returns to the brothel—now strangely empty and dilapidated—and witnesses Frieda, lying alone in the parlor, die. Jack's discovery quickly makes him one of the wealthiest men in the world. Twenty years later in 1945, he lives in luxury on a Caribbean island that he owns, in an estate named Eureka. However, Jack's wealth brings him no peace, as he copes with Helen, his bored, alcoholic wife; Tracy, his headstrong daughter who has married Claude Van Horn, a dissolute, philandering social climber; his paranoid assistant Charles Perkins; and Miami mobsters led by Aurelio D'Amato sent by crime boss Mayakofsky, who wants to acquire Jack's island and build a casino there. Jack's life is entangled with the obsessions of those around him with greed, power, and debauchery against a background of occult symbolism.