Reviews

This film, as with all adaptations, deserves and requires two reviews. One for its innate quality, and one for the quality of its adaptation.

As to its innate quality - it is a reasonably-crafted film, with intuitive and sensitive direction and good performances all round. That is all, really; too many characters feel a little rushed and two-dimensional.

Take, for instance, Donohue. An intriguing character ends up saying he is changing his ways as he's about to die of cancer. Or how about Lorbeer; a character written as a plot point, so lifeless that an enthusiastic performance by Pete Postlethwaite falls flat.

"Rafe" Fiennes and Rachael Weisz give beautiful lead performances, especially Fiennes, and they have strong support from Danny Huston and Richard McCabe. The aforementioned scripting issues foil other promising performances.

So it is a reasonable thriller, sensitive and intelligent. But it is not all it could be - in part due to a shoddy adaptation.

The screenplay skilfully contracts some sequences not conducive to the movie format (Ham's legal background provides a shady passport instead of betrayed detectives; his son Guido replaces another Guido far away on Elba; and most impressively, THAT epistle), but completely fluffs up one of the two foundations of the book - an ensemble of three-dimensional characters.

Take, for instance, Donohue. During a row with Kenny K, his inner monologue recalls his wife and he helping a starter football league in the slums; and how he reflected now that he wished he'd done more of that, and less of what he does. That is easily transposed in place of the cancer drivel, and builds up the old spook as a wild bundle of emotions and memories and dreams (as we all are) rather than a desperate cipher.

Whilst Justin's Odyseyy does encompass four countries, the excision of its Canadian leg removes one of the keys to the character of Lorbeer; and without that strong, believable character, the key confrontation loses a lot of its energy.

There is no need to continue comparing the book and the film; but given the material, and the number of mistakes made with characters, where a more faithful adaptation might have been in order, one cannot help but feel a little disappointed, on both of the reviewing criteria.

Oh dear, a modern film has a slightly clichéd central moral. As some other commentators on this film have pointed out, that's not really the point. The design, the surrealism, the music, and the performances from a few of the leads, those are the points, those are the correct foci. Don't try to look deeply at everything.

Who can deny the magnificence of the doomed charge of the clockwork toys; the hilarious yet strangely moving speech by Williams before it; Cusack's wonderfully nutty yet tragic performance; Cuba Gooding's intelligent performance; Williams' brilliant ad libbing; the set design; the music; and many others?

And if we really must look deeply at the screenplay, at the morals, how about the following two points:

*The question of Gooding's colour is never answered, not posed within the film itself. We pose it ourself, and it leads down interesting roads in the mind (I believe this whole issue was something noted by Levinstein in the pre-pro notes).

*The acceptance we must grow up eventually, but the argument that we may still retain some of our innocence, some of our joy. Lesley (Williams) had to accept that not all things have a truly peaceful solution, but will not fight back violently; he will fight, yes, but on his terms, in his way. Those references to Gandhi weren't just for comedy value.