airfoyle

Sometimes a film adaptation of a book is better than the book, sometimes worse. This one is much worse. The premise of both the book and the movie is that one man's dreams can affect reality, can even change the past. Ursula Leguin was at pains in the book to explain how this might be possible, by focusing on the idea that reality itself might be a dream. In the movie, it is just a brute fact, never explained. The book has a somewhat hand-waving idea that only those in the vicinity of the dreamer, George Orr (Lukas Haas) including the dreamer himself realize, when he wakes up, that reality used to be different. This idea is gone, Hence we have someone exploiting George's powers even though it is never clear when the exploiter realizes George even *has* those powers. The climax of the book occurs when the exploiter tries to give himself the power to have reality-changing dreams and causes utter chaos. In the movie, he causes only traffic jams, and it's never explained why, or what he's trying to accomplish.

The budget for this movie did not include any special effects at all. That made it difficult to convey the idea of fundamental changes to reality. Leguin had George dream up climate change, plagues, volcanoes, abandoned cities, aliens, aerial battles with the aliens, and a final jumbling of all the realities together. Almost none of these things make it to the movie. The movie has a lot of rain at the outset and sunny skies later, but we can tell the sun is shining through the fake rain even in the early scenes. The book is set in Portland, Oregon, but the budget apparently could not get them out of L.A.

My wife and I stumbled on this slight-looking movie on our streaming device (Amazon), and stayed up too late because we got so caught up in the story. Only when we reached the credits did we realize it was based on an Elmore Leonard story. With John Hawkes, Yasiin Bey, Tim Robbins, and Jennifer Anniston and other fine actors in the cast, how can you go wrong?

Although the story has its share of humor (mainly handled by Mark Boone Junior as a Nazi) and suspense (will Bey, Robbins, and the treacherous Melanie, played by Isla Fisher, succeed in killing or maiming Anniston's character?), it's not as crazy or violent as, say, "Fargo" or "The Professional" (the Gary Oldman/Natalie Portman movie). I love those two movies, but they don't set some kind of new standard of excess that every movie has to meet. Not every director is the Coen brothers; not every actor is Gary Oldman. If you're so jaded you can't appreciate "Life of Crime," stop going to see action movies!

I gave the movie a "7" because for me a movie has to be a serious drama or a comedy you can watch many times before it can earn an 8 or 9. A solid 7 is a good rating for a story whose purpose is entertainment.