Recensioni di Metacritic

Happily, director/star/co-producer Gary Sinise has approached it not with the awe of an English professor, but with the practical eye of a craftsman: Here are solid characters, a taut and emotional story, a beginning, a middle and a wrenching end.

The story is as pure and lean as the original fable which formed in Steinbeck's mind. And because they don't try to do anything fancy -- don't try to make it anything other than exactly what it is -- they have a quiet triumph.

Lyrical, stirring, and beautifully acted — a seamless adaptation of a novel many will recall with almost too much familiarity.

Well-mounted and very traditional, Of Mice and Men honorably serves John Steinbeck’s classic story of two Depression-era drifters without bringing anything new to it. Fine performances down the line and sensitive handling justify this attempt to introduce a new generation to the small tragedy of George and Lennie, although lack of any edge or fresh motivation to tell the tale will keep enthusiasm, and B.O. results, at a moderate level.

Malkovich and Sinise, who worked together in Chicago's Steppenwolf Theatre (which Sinise co-founded), are touching and pleasurable together. Malkovich's portrayal of big, simple naif Lennie will attract the most attention, yet he is remarkably restrained, skirting the dangerous fence between verisimilitude and sheer ham. But Sinise, in the quieter, caretaking role, achieves at least as much.

Yet for all its evident talent, Of Mice and Men is not very exciting. It could be that looking back at Lennie and George with the perspective of time robs them of their urgency. There's no surprise left.

Overall this is an effective reminder of a minor literary masterpiece, but most folk would be better off reading the novel or checking out the 1939 movie version.

When combined with Sinise's solid work in front of the camera (as George) and behind it, this Of Mice and Men makes for an unassuming but well-made movie which, unlike so many adaptations of literary works, does not go awry.

Is there enough reason for Gary Sinise to have remade Of Mice and Men? You can respond to Steinbeck’s qualities of feeling in the movie, but Sinise, who directed as well as stars as the itinerant ranch hand George opposite John Malkovich’s hulking, feeble-minded Lennie, doesn’t really make the material his own. It’s a “distinguished” piece of filmmaking in that somewhat lifeless, classical tradition where all the actors seem a bit too posed to be believable and all the colors seem too bright and varnished.

Seems doomed to remain a period piece.