The book is good. Written by a French author living in Canada, it mixes the innocence of childhood with the atrocity of warfare. The first is personified by a young girl trying to escape the authority of her quite unrecommendable mother; the second by a mercenary who just came back from Bosnia, where he experienced killings and genocide. The story is about him finding back traces of innocence by helping her to escape, to survive, and therefore to grow up. It is full of complexity in the characters and of permanent tension in the plot. It is the basis for an excellent movie.
Alas, ladies and gentlemen, here comes the first part of the spoiler: this isn't an adaptation from this book, or at least it goes so far from the book's purpose that it's unbearable. First, it is untruthful. Second, and more important, the freedom it takes towards the book doesn't make it better, on the contrary: the bad guys look strangely unprepared, the girl's mother isn't a powerful woman at all and looks completely unable to rationalize the gang she's supposed to lead.
More important, the girl becomes almost a secondary character, when she was at the core of the plot in the book - along with her father, the only convincing character in the film. Jean-Marc Barr doesn't show what he's able to do, and most actors (especially Asia Argento) empoverish their characters by forgetting they are excellent actors. The multiplicity of languages isn't rendered. And the final scene where Hugo refuses to stay with Anita, symbolizing his complete comeback to innocence and childhood, is turned into a strange enrollment of the girl into the pro-weapons lobby...
In short, this story deserves another film, with the same budget, the same technical crew (action scenes and visual effects are great, especially for a French movie!), and more or less the same actors. But a different choice should be made in what to keep from the book...
Alas, ladies and gentlemen, here comes the first part of the spoiler: this isn't an adaptation from this book, or at least it goes so far from the book's purpose that it's unbearable. First, it is untruthful. Second, and more important, the freedom it takes towards the book doesn't make it better, on the contrary: the bad guys look strangely unprepared, the girl's mother isn't a powerful woman at all and looks completely unable to rationalize the gang she's supposed to lead.
More important, the girl becomes almost a secondary character, when she was at the core of the plot in the book - along with her father, the only convincing character in the film. Jean-Marc Barr doesn't show what he's able to do, and most actors (especially Asia Argento) empoverish their characters by forgetting they are excellent actors. The multiplicity of languages isn't rendered. And the final scene where Hugo refuses to stay with Anita, symbolizing his complete comeback to innocence and childhood, is turned into a strange enrollment of the girl into the pro-weapons lobby...
In short, this story deserves another film, with the same budget, the same technical crew (action scenes and visual effects are great, especially for a French movie!), and more or less the same actors. But a different choice should be made in what to keep from the book...