Les Misérables

One could make the snobbish mistake and try to evaluate this movie in comparison to the book, play, or musical. If one were to see the movie as it is, a well acted and directed tale of love, betrayal and passion, then one would NEVER be dissapointed. Liam Neeson IS Jean Valjean, Geoffrey Rush IS the maniacal Javer. Paris IS the city for lovers and broken dreams. This is a movie that sweeps the cobwebs out of your heart and MAKES you feel empathy and warmth for the characters. You want to see them happy and experience some sort of peace in their world. This is a movie that one thinks about for years. A true gem.

I thought the film was well acted, Liam Neeson and Geoffrey Rush were superb, but the film missed a lot of the plot lines and characters from the book, most importantly Eponine who is integral to the story. Maybe 2 hours was not long enough to be true to the book.

It is not possible to make a movie out of this marathon Victor Hugo novel (the original version I borrowed from library got around thousand pages and I had to settle for an abridged one) without leaving out some good portions. It is only to see what portions are left out and what are stressed. That depends on the director's or screenwriter's judgement. See Dumas' "Count of Monte Cristo" and you'll know what I'm talking about. That movie seemed to be based upon an already abridged version at the first place... such incoherent it was. What audience would appreciate is about making a good film, not following every bits of novel little by little. And that is why "Les Misérables" is a good film. It showed excellently what it showed. What is left out is left out, be it some characters that has no major relation to what the director thought to be the main story or some solitary incidents however interesting they might be.

It's got a nice star-studded cast. Geoffrey Rush is magnificent as Inspector Javert. If I am to stress one aspect of his totally excellent acting it would be his accent. I just loved it. Rush brought that vintage English accent instead of the expected French accent, that's I think became more suitable. Liam Neeson is an acting genius and I would place this one perhaps as his third best, behind "Schindler's List" and "Michael Collins" of course. He is definitely the obvious choice for such type of lead roles. The two main young characters of the film are played nicely by Claire Danes and Hans Matheson. Danes acted up to the standard of this film's allover acting level, which is quite good. Although somehow I feel Uma Thurman is a poor choice for Fantine. Her acting was not up to that level.

There are around 15-odd screen versions of Les Misérables including TV movies etc. The French production of 1982 by Robert Hossein was good and was definitely longer and more detailed than this. Many would disagree but I think this one by Bille August is better than that. Call it vulgar Hollywoodisation of old classics but still it's a worthy film on its own right, perhaps due to superb casting.

How did this film get missed by the Acadmey Awards? This was a delight to watch. Goeffry Rush does such a good job as the inspector that you forget he is an actor and you really begin to dislike him. This film was also perfectly cast, and it has a wonderful music score. I remember thinking to myself as I watched it, that this movie was going to sweep all the Academy awards at the time it came out(but it didn't-infact in was only nominated for one award -Best Music Score(which it lost to "Shakespere in Love").If you will recall "Shakespere in Love" destroyed all the competition at the Awards in 1998. What a SHAME because this film was 10 times better than "Shakespere in Love" in EVERY catagory. This is also one of my favorite films of all time. I own a copy on VHS which I will get out about once every 3 or 4 months and watch the Beautiful story of Jean Vel-Jean all over again. Looking back to 1998 I still AMAZED that Liam Neeson and Jeffry Rush weren't even nominated for thier roles in this film. This is a film that you and your family will love to watch over and over again. It gets 5 out of 5 stars- A perfect Film, A masterpiece

Let me save you all from a horrible Blockbuster night. I don't know how Hollywood can bungle up a story that was the inspiration to France and now the rest of this world. Victor Hugo didn't write this story to have his work ruined by Hollywood simpletons. The story is notaccurate in the matter that Fantine did not show amourous feelings toward Valjean (played by Uma Thurman and Liam Neeson). Valjean depicted in this movie showed no progress in being a better man as the book clearly explained. Thus, leading us to the third flaw in the remake of Les Miserables. Valjean never, Never, NEVER...laid his hands on Cosette. She was his savior from doing any more wrong. All the director did in this movie was wasting the actors, studio and the publics time. If you own this movie, please take the time to burn it. Also ask yourselves this... How can anybody ruin a story that's already written? For the director... Please don't do anymore remakes, simply write your own scripts and bite the bullet on your own bad stories.