Volunteers (1985) on Netflix
Lawrence Bourne III leaves Yale in 1962 owing $28,000 in gambling debts. With his father refusing to pay, he takes his roommate Kent's place on a Peace Corps flight to Thailand.
- Netflix3.1/5
- IMDb5.5/1011,840 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes58%
Trailer
Plot summary
Lawrence Bourne III is a spoiled Yale graduate of 1962 with a gambling debt of $28,000. His father refuses to cover it, so Lawrence swaps places with his roommate Kent and boards a Peace Corps flight bound for Thailand. On the plane he meets Tom Tuttle, a Washington State graduate from Tacoma, and Beth Wexler, who turns down his advances once she works out why he is there. In Thailand, John Reynolds assigns the three of them to build a bridge for the villagers, whose only English speaker is At Toon. Tuttle argues with the villagers on the first day over which wood to use.
Cast
- Jacqueline Evansas Aunt Eunice
- Pamela Gualas Tammy the Stewardess
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Volunteers (1985)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Sargent Shriver, who had run the Peace Corps, read the script and told director Nicholas Meyer it "was like spitting on the American flag", demanding changes. Nothing was altered, and by release Shriver had left the post and Peace Corps officials were happy to endorse the film.
- The Thai village was built in Tuxtepec, Oaxaca, Mexico, modeled on the Karen people of Burma's Golden Triangle, and the crew put up what was then the world's longest wooden suspension bridge, more than 250 yards long. Over 100 people, Thai families among them, spent two and a half months there.
- Tom Hanks had met Rita Wilson on an episode of Bosom Buddies, but it was this comedy, in which she plays Beth Wexler, that brought them back together; she later became his wife.
- The Coca-Cola scene between Hanks and Wilson was attacked as product placement because TriStar sat under Columbia Pictures, then owned by The Coca-Cola Company. Cowriter Levine answered that the scene was already in the 1980 first draft, when MGM was to make the film.
- The film sends up David Lean pictures such as Lawrence of Arabia and The Bridge on the River Kwai, swapping the "Colonel Bogey March" for the Washington State University fight song.
