General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20265 min read

The Honorary Consul

The Honorary Consul is a 1983 drama film directed by John Mackenzie, adapted from Graham Greene's 1973 novel of the same name, with a screenplay by Christopher Hampton. It stars Michael Caine as Charley Fortnum, the alcoholic honorary British consul in an Argentine town, Richard Gere as Dr. Eduardo Plarr, a half-English doctor having an affair with Fortnum's wife, and Bob Hoskins as Colonel Perez, the local police chief. The story turns on a bungled kidnapping: rebels intending to seize the American ambassador mistakenly take the consul instead.¹^•² In the United States the film was released under the title Beyond the Limit.³

Key fact	Detail
Source	Adaptation of Graham Greene's 1973 novel The Honorary Consul; screenplay by Christopher Hampton¹
Director and cast	Directed by John Mackenzie; Michael Caine, Richard Gere, Bob Hoskins, Elpidia Carrillo, Joaquim de Almeida⁴
Release	United States, September 30, 1983, as Beyond the Limit; France, June 12, 1985; Spain, March 22, 1985³^•⁵^•⁶
Runtime and rating	104 minutes; rated R in the United States³
Budget and gross	Estimated budget $11,800,000; gross in the US and Canada $5,997,566³
Production	World Film Services and Parsons & Whittemore Lyddon Ltd.; producers Richard F. Dalton and Norma Heyman; filmed in Veracruz, Mexico¹^•³
Author's verdict	Graham Greene disowned the film, calling Richard Gere "completely and utterly miscast"²

Spoilers

Plot

The film is set in Corrientes, in northeast Argentina, during the period of the Dirty War. The half-English, half-Latino physician Dr. Eduardo Plarr makes his home on the Argentine side of the river from Paraguay, the country he escaped in childhood when his dissident father was taken into custody and never seen again. He attends Charley Fortnum, the hard-drinking honorary British consul, and knows Colonel Perez, the local police chief. Sent to examine Fortnum's wife, Clara, Plarr recognizes her as a girl who once worked at the town brothel, and the two begin an affair.²

Plarr's childhood friend Leon, a former priest who has joined a group of underground rebels, blackmails him into providing information about a visit by the United States ambassador, whom the rebels plan to kidnap. The plan backfires: they accidentally capture Charley Fortnum instead, and the consul must pick a side while Plarr is drawn into the crisis.⁷^•⁸ In the film's ending, Plarr is killed a few minutes before the close.⁹

Production

The rights to Greene's novel passed through several hands before the film was made: the Harry Ransom Center holds correspondence and contracts over the rights with Gor, Inc. in 1975 and 1976 and with The Film Writers Company, Inc. in 1978.¹⁰ The rights were ultimately purchased by producer Norma Heyman, who, to the disappointment of the director Peter Duffell and of Greene himself, decided to have the film re-scripted by Christopher Hampton.¹¹ Heyman produced the film with Richard F. Dalton, and with it she became the first British woman to produce a solo independent feature film.¹^•²

The film was shot on location in Mexico, with filming at Veracruz, and was produced by World Film Services and Parsons & Whittemore Lyddon Ltd. of the United Kingdom.³^•⁶ Phil Meheux was the cinematographer and Stuart Baird the editor.⁶ The score was composed by Stanley Myers, built around a central theme by Paul McCartney performed by McCartney with the guitarist John Williams, with additional music from Richard Harvey.¹²

Reception

The film was not a hit at the box office and met with decidedly mixed reviews.⁷ Its estimated budget was $11.8 million against a US and Canadian gross of $5,997,566, with an opening weekend of $2,208,976.³ In Spain it drew 461,161 spectators after opening in Madrid on March 22, 1985.⁶

Greene's disapproval. The novelist disowned the adaptation, saying he did not want to see Richard Gere undressing and calling Gere "completely and utterly miscast".² The British Film Institute's retrospective list of Greene adaptations ranks the film among the particularly desultory treatments of his work, saying it never recovered from the miscasting of Gere, and places The Honorary Consul (1973) alongside The Heart of the Matter (1948) as perhaps Greene's finest novels.¹³ Time Out's review likewise found Gere's reading of Dr. Plarr, a character to whom machismo is alien, all wrong, while judging that Caine, as the anti-heroic middle-aged lush, gave the performance of his life.¹⁴

Contemporary criticism. Peter Ackroyd, the English novelist, biographer, and critic, writing in The Spectator in January 1984, called the film by no means worthless, noting its solid professionalism and that the story holds the attention as a conventional adventure, but argued that it fails where it becomes a self-conscious adaptation, citing the contrived Catholic elements.⁹ A student review in The Student was harsher, finding that slack pacing, indifferent camerawork, and direction failed to point up the moral ambiguities of Greene's tale.¹⁵ Later assessments have been more forgiving: a 2019 Blu-ray review called the film worth celebrating for Caine's performance,⁷ and another retrospective described it as a flawed but intriguing late-Greene adaptation with a memorable supporting cast.¹²

Release and titles

The film opened in the United States on September 30, 1983 as Beyond the Limit, a retitling one commentator attributed to distributors' doubts that American audiences would work out what an honorary consul is.³^•¹⁶ It reached France on June 12, 1985 through UGC⁵ and Spain on March 22, 1985.⁶ NBC edited six minutes from the film for its 1987 network television premiere.³ The film has since circulated on home video and streaming under both titles; it is not currently available on subscription streaming in the United States or the United Kingdom.⁴

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Individual films by title and year › Crime, thriller, and mystery films (individual works) › 1980s films

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026

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