RARubin

For those folks that want great literature without having to read a 500-page tome, then this Readers Digest like condensation might be the ticket. All the high points of Moby Dick are touched on starting with 'Call me Ishmael," and so on.

As all have already pointed out, Gregory Peck has nailed the Ahab character. You got me how he managed the whalebone peg leg. The obsessive rush to take vengeance on the great whale boils in crazed Ahab's head and certainly his crew one by one catch the fever for either greed or blind allegiance. Therefore, our allegorical story full of biblical references mete out large portions of philosophical sophisms, enough for the entire Humanities Departments at fifty Universities to burn the midnight whale oil; oh, the reams of paper written about poor Moby, we're talking deforestation here.

If ever there was a story to get young men to read Lit, Moby Dick is the one.

Yeah, Ben Kingsley is menacing, but personally, I'd have punched his muscled-up Gandhi face early on if I were Ray Winstone.

Winstone is a retired gangster living with his ex-porn star wife and a few ex-gangster friends in a villa in Spain. Life is good, but then the feared ex-partner, Kingsley shows up to insult everybody and generally ruffle feathers, the ultimate party pooper. Okay, okay, Winstone will help with the heist after a disagreement, a serious disagreement. Back in London, Teddy, played by Deadwood's leering Ian McShane has created a plan to steal from a high security vault a gazillion dollars. The team dives into the most unlikely underwater heist scheme ever devised.

It's all very posh and not very believable, but quite entertaining.

Charlize Theron, a very beautiful woman plays the "John Killer" as a gawky, tall retard. She wins an academy award for being consistently foul, goofy, and murderous. I'm assuming there's a certain amount of sympathy here for an abused from cradle female, but her victims were run of the mill lonely-hearts except for an occasional sadist, but hell why get angry when occupational hazard strikes. Get yourself a lawyer like any worker's occupation case plaintiff Christina Ricci, not in Ghost World, but close, plays Charlize's lover. She's rather retarded too. I can't quite place the blue collar Florida malaise that the audience is supposed to understand instinctively. Well, ah, why didn't lonely Ricci go to beautician school and meet some gals of the same persuasion on line. The whole idea that a down-and-out boozer could even interest this young mixed up girl is hard to swallow. Oh, but this is a true-life story. Never mind.