La bella straniera

I love Joseph Conrad but the films never seem to work. "The Duellists" was too thin, "The Secret Agent" terrible. "Lord Jim"s the best of a bad bunch so far.

This doesn't up the score much, but it's an honest try. The locations are good and it has the feel of the time and place. Casting is arse over face, with pudgy Sam Neill as the novel's skeletal Mr Jones (hammy, mannered, ineffective) and Willem Dafoe as the novel's pudgy Heyst (very good indeed). Irene Jacob's a blank sheet, but at least she's better here than in "U.S. Marshalls." Best of the bunch is Rufus Sewell, who has Jones' 'private secretary' to perfection, and he's an actor I've no time for in anything else.

Biggest drawback is the narration. Bill Patterson may be great, but he barely keeps his trap shut for more than two minutes. He's always telling us back story, what Heyst thinks, what Schomberg thinks. It's as if Mark Peploe can't let go of the novel or as if the producers didn't think the audience would get it. Considering it sat on the shelf for years, probably the last.

The end is under effective because you never get any feel that the lovers bring each other to life. Dafoe does well, but Jacob is like Isabelle Adjani at her weakest here, doing too little. Good stuff along the way, and Neill does redeem himself with the great line "We are the world, Mr Heyst, come to pay you a visit." Now that's Conrad.

Victory is one of my favorite books. Victory is not one of my favorite movies. The film sticks pretty close to the original plot, but all the feeling is lost. In the novel, the relationship between Lena and Heyst is heartbreaking. In the film, it's just another bland romance.

Also, Mr. Jones in the book is an extremely thin, spectral character, while Axel Heyst is a solid businessman. So, to me the casting of Dafoe as Heyst and Neill as Jones is completely backwards.

This isn't a horrible picture by any means, but it could have easily been far better.

6/10

The film starts off with a hint of sultry islands and sultry nights in the South Seas and I was planning on liking it, but about one third of the way through most of the characters became unintelligible. If I could only make out what they said, it might have been a good movie. I ran the volume all the way up and all I got was British mumbles even when I rolled the tape back to try to catch what they were saying.

I hope the book reads better than this film plays, because the screenplay seems pretty weak. Willem Dafoe in a restrained performance, would be the only reason to endure 99 tedious minutes of this. While the 1913 period south seas locations are reproduced satisfactorily, the constant narration and wooden performances sink it. There is some nice tropical island scenery, but the entire cat and mouse game played by Dafoe, Sam Neill, Rufus Sewell, and Irene Jacob, is never believable. Very talky at times, everything just sort of drifts along to an extremely underwhelming conclusion. Very forgettable, and not recommended, even for Willem Dafoe fans. - MERK

In the early 1900's in Sourabaya, Java, a man (Dafoe) rescues a beautiful violinist (Jacob) from indentured servitude, taking her to his desolate island home while being followed by larceny, treachery, and madness. "Victory" is a middle-of-the-marquee film which takes on the challenging elements of love, intrigue, suspense, betrayal, murder, etc. in an exotic location shoot but, in spite of good work from a good cast, never seems to be all it could have been. Hampered by ordinary cinematography, a superficial melodramatic execution, and less than sterling direction, "Victory", appears destined to die a slow death among the cable channels. (C+)