‘Probably one of the stupidest things I ever did was in a movie called Proof of Life,’ Russell went on to explain that he shockingly chose to forgo safety wire and a harness. ‘… He added: ‘I ran up and I grabbed the strap and then it takes off [up to] 100 ft…During one take the director told the pilot to ‘go harder’ … we bank over this batlled field and an explosion goes off,’ he said. ‘I get like 20 cuts across my face and the only thing that stopped me from dying was having a grip on the strap.’
During a break in filming at Stowe School in Buckinghamshire (where Russell Crowe‘s character watches his son play rugby union), one of the extras asked Russell Crowe for some acting advice. After their conversation, Crowe remembered the student’s serious interest in acting and sent him autographed posters and photos from his film, Gladiator (2000), and wrote a letter saying, “A journey of thousand miles begins with a single step.” The extra, Henry Cavill, went on to pursue his acting career and ultimately landed the role of Superman in Man of Steel (2013), with Crowe playing his father.
Russell Crowe and Meg Ryan became romantically involved during filming. Ryan and her husband, Dennis Quaid, divorced the next year.
Originally it was planned that all extras were to receive the normal pay used for American extras. But the Ecuadorian government, which could not afford to have their actors paid that well, demanded that the production pay Ecuadorian salaries.
Most shoots encounter difficulty of some sort but the filming of Proof of Life (2000) was beset with them. They suffered frequent hailstorms, mudslides destroyed the roads to locations, 23 members of the crew came down with a case of severe altitude sickness, two volcanic eruptions and, at one point, tear gas wafting onto the set from a nearby riot.
Harrison Ford was originally offered the lead role but turned it down.
Terry (Russell Crowe) mentions being in the Special Air Service Regiment in Australia, then leaving to join the British SAS because of a lack of action. Post-Vietnam in Australia, operational deployments were highly limited, and often soldiers went entire careers without being deployed on operations. The British armed forces had more involvement internationally. This has since changed for Australia since the late 1990s.
The Actor portraing “Downtown 2”, member of Terry’s rescue team, was actually a member of the Ecuadorian Special Forces. Similarly, the actor portraing “Downtown 3” was one of the security advisors on the production, hence his excellent handling of the FN Minimi LMG during the rescue operation.
During the scene at 1:40 into the movie when he says, “these guys are my Panama crew”, you can see a piece of cardboard on the wall behind with “JUST CAUSE” written on it. Operation Just Cause was a U.S. invasion of Panama to capture Manuel Noriega, military leader and drug criminal – a storyline very similar to the movie’s plot.
Meg Ryan’s character is shown holding a cigarette in numerous scenes, but unlike Pamela Reed and Russell Crowe, she never actually smokes.
Castle Rock wanted Taylor Hackford to shoot the film in Mexico instead of 14,000 feet above sea level in Ecuador. They changed their mind when Hackford pointed out that there were more murders per capita in Mexico than Ecuador.
Kessler’s Bible is used for two maps of the area. The main map is drawn over Luke 21-22, which talks about the return of the Son of Man (Thorne will come and save Peter Bowman). The second map has a passage marked out, Matthew 5, which discusses the wrongness of revenge and loving your neighbor.
The school bus full of children shown in the kidnapping scene are students of Colegio Aleman (German High School), a private school located outside of Quito chartered by the German government.
One of the names of the hostages on the white board in the London Office is “Idziak” – the director of photography for this film is Slawomir Idziak.
Meg Ryan was paid $15 million for her work on the film.
The helicopter shown at the opening credits is a Polish PZL W-3 Sokol (W-3 Hawk).
The ball cap Peter is wearing when he is kidnapped is from Rice University in Houston, Texas.
Meg Ryan stayed true to her hippie character, going bra-less for the entire movie.
GOOFS
The Polaroid which terry examines with a magnifying glass shows Peter smiling slightly. The picture Alice & Janice look at has his mouth closed in a grimace (the plot makes an issue of why he isn’t smiling in the photo).
Peter and Alice, invited to attend the charity event, can be seen sitting at their table at the party before they even entered the room.
In the final scene, when the helicopter is returning from the retrieval mission, Meg walks up to greet her husband, and she has a huge fever blister on the right side of her upper lip. Later, in that same scene, the fever blister disappears.
Alice slaps Thorne’s left cheek, but when he walks in to the house, he is massaging his right cheek.
The ferry’s position in relation to the overhead bridges changes when Terry is traveling on the river Thames, talking to his superior.
FACTUAL ERRORS
The rocket launcher fired by one of the guerrillas is an American M-72 LAW (Light Anti-tank Weapon). Two mistakes are made. When launched, all the propellant in the rocket burns instantly, while it is still in the launching tube. If it did not, the soldier who fired it would be blasted in the face as the rocket leaves the launcher. Since all the propellant has been burned there is no trail of smoke behind the rocket as it flies toward the target, as this movie shows.
The other mistake is that the rocket, which is anti-tank, contains a shaped charge warhead. Such a warhead focuses the blast to a very fine point straight forward in order to blast through armor. In this case the rocket missed the machine gunner and exploded several feet away. The blast would go straight into the ground, creating a very small crater and having very little blast to the sides. It would have had no effect at all on him (other than a very noisy blast). But the movie shows a large unfocused explosion which wounds the man and blows him through the air. That is not the way an M-72 works at all.
Even though the movie takes place in a fictional South American country, the Ecuadorian flag can be seen flying in many places.
MISTAKES
Bowman speaks into the wrong side of his Nokia 9110 Communicator.
When two ELT soldiers fly into the air after Thorne detonates a claymore mine, wires are visible aiding the stuntmen.
Even though the movie takes place in a fictional South American country, the Ecuadorian flag can be seen flying in many places.