Reviews

(Spoilers)

Chilling dramatisation of the post-war murders of John Christie, a London clerk, who not only successfully killed a fellow tenant's wife and child but successfully framed the same simple-minded Welshman Timothy Evans for the murders, before going on to commit still more.

The performances are uniformly excellent. Attenborough, almost unrecognisable to those who only know him as Father Christmas in 'Miracle on 34th Street' or the befuddled tycoon in 'Jurassic Park' is terrifying as the mundane but malevolent Christie. Perhaps only his role as the tyrannical Pinkie in 'Brighton Rock' has been as compelling. Although unavoidably a bit short to play Christie he gives a perfect performance matched only by a young John Hurt as the tragic fantasist Evans. The banality of Austerity Britain is no less vividly recaptured.

It is impossible for a British viewer to watch 10 Rillington Place now without being reminded of the more recent and still more terrible Cromwell Street murders. But, more than thirty years on, the film remains a chilling reminder not only of the unspeakable evil that can exist within everyday surroundings but also of the dangers of instituting a state death penalty. Ludovic Kennedy's book was influential in securing the end of Britain's death penalty in the sixties. 10 Rillington Place remains a stark warning to all who seek the return of the gallows as an easy answer to Britain's crime problems.

Some of the British critics have been a bit sniffy about Enigma, but in truth, while it has something of the mood of a Sunday teatime drama and is hardly likely to wow hordes of US audiences, it's nevertheless a perfectly competent and enjoyable adaptation of Robert Harris's decent World War Two thriller. It's wartime setting also seems unexpectedly timely in the light of the current international crisis.

SPOILER PARAGRAPH: Particular criticism has focused on the ending. Some have charged that it is offensive that the ultimate villain is revealed to be a traitorous Pole, when in reality, the Polish played an invaluable role in the codebreaking at Bletchley Park. Possibly more should have been made of the Polish contribution to this aspect of the British war effort, but if so, this is the fault of Harris's novel, not this film. One also should remember this is only intended to be a story. The traitor's nationality provides a clever motive for his actions; namely, that he is motivated by animosity to Britain's wartime ally Stalinist Russia rather than Germany, the massive and crucial wartime contribution of the USSR always an uncomfortable truth of the Allies supposed ‘war of democracy'. The book and film also exploit the true story of the Enigma machine, far more tactfully than the recent U571 did.

Performance-wise, the wondrous Kate Winslet, though deliberately dowdier than usual, is still far more beautiful than the blond skeleton playing Claire Romilly and gives a typically excellent performance. Dougray Scott is also decent as upper-lower-middle-class hero Tom Jericho. Ultimate acting honours must, however, go to Jeremy Northam for his superb performance as the villainous Wigram. His performance is superlative in whichever scene he's in. He's also camper than a field of boy scouts.

(Spoilers throughout) Am I alone in thinking this film in many ways improves upon an excellent, if flawed, novel? Make no mistake: DeBernieres' book is a modern classic, but it has two major weaknesses – one aesthetic, another of historical accuracy. This film nobly addresses both of these.

1) Captain Corelli's Mandolin is an excellent and moving novel. The idyllic pre-war life of the natives is vividly and touchingly depicted. The subsequent horrors of war are thus all the more harrowing when they finally arrive.

For all that, DeBernieres singularly fails to create a satisfactory conclusion. The last hundred pages or so detailing the intricacies of Pelagia's post-war existence are not uninteresting in themselves but seem banal indeed compared to the stirring drama that has come before. It is essentially a Second World War novel and should have ended with Corelli's departure from the island, or at least, soon after. The concluding chapters add nothing to the novel – DeBernieres should have been more ruthless and ended the story as soon as the main action stopped. The Great Escape would not have been improved by a concluding section about the surviving character's lives in the post-war decades and nor is this.

Commendably, the film improves upon this weakness. Now Corelli returns, soon after the war's end. This is a decided improvement on the novel where an ageing Corelli does not return – inexplicably – until fifty years later! It is thus far too late for him and Pelagia to get together and provides a wholly unsatisfactory outcome to the novel.

2) The novel is also undermined by a serious historical misrepresentation of the Greek anti-Nazi resistance movement, notably the organisation ELAS who Mandras falls in with. In the book, these are portrayed as Stalinist demagogues, more interested in the propagation of a narrow interpretation of Marxist dogma and political infighting with the British Allies, than genuinely resisting the Nazis. After the war, they are portrayed as practically being akin to the Nazi terror they supplant:

‘…in Cephallonia the Communists began to deport awkward characters to concentration camps…Hitler would have been proud of such assiduous pupils.' (p442).

As DeBernieres now grudgingly admits, in this respect, he got his research badly wrong. Although I am no expert on wartime Greece, by all accounts, ELAS played an active and constructive role in combating the Nazis. The film rectifies DeBernieres' error, showing Mandras and the other guerrillas fighting the Nazis side by side with the Italians. This does involve a fairly major alteration in the novel's story line, however – Mandras's attempt at rape and subsequent death thus do not occur here, nor do any of his guerrilla experiences which are detailed throughout the middle stages of the book.

There were other changes in the film that I was less keen on, however. The role of the Italian soldier Carlo, who plays a fairly major part in the novel, is here almost wholly omitted, presumably because of fears that his homosexuality would offend the crucial American market. His gesture in saving Corelli from the firing squad is thus largely inexplicable, except as – rather lamely – a benevolent sacrifice towards Pelagia.

On the other hand, CCM is such a long and complex novel that one can forgive the film makers for not transcribing every aspect of the book to the screen. Film is a different medium to literature. The unfairly hostile critical reception this film has received suggests far too many expected a carbon copy of the novel to be revealed on film. (And as Madden also directed the generally awful but highly overrated Shakespeare in Love perhaps this evens the score somewhat).

That said, the film is not perfect. I am not convinced Cage was the ideal Captain Corelli. The depiction of village life does come across fairly whimsically and compares poorly to the portrayal of European rural life in the 1940s in Jean De Florette. Although I've said changes from the book are not bad per se, some of the changes – the date of the earthquake from 1953 to 1947 seemed rather pointless. But generally ignore the pedants. The film would not be improved either by a) forcing the cast to learn and speak their character's native languages and subtitling throughout or b) correcting such 'inaccuracies' as the Italians occupying the island for two years (er - they did) or b) depicting Abyssinian style atrocities committed by the Italian forces on the island (none recorded). While not quite in the class of other Second World War classics like Empire of the Sun, Schindler's List or The Bridge on the River Kwai, this is generally a good film.

It is strange given Jeff Bridges' long and varied career that his portrayal of US President Jackson Evans is less reminiscent of Bill Clinton than of a slightly smartened up version of Jeff ‘The Dude' Lebowski. This impression is perhaps deliberately strengthened by the inclusion of an otherwise irrelevant White House ten pin bowling scene and the casting of Sam Elliot (who played the barfly narrator of the Coen brothers' film) as his White House chief of staff.

Overall though, the performances are the strongest thing in this flawed but not unenjoyable political thriller. In particular, Gary Oldman is truly outstanding as the Kenneth Starr-like evil reactionary Shelly Runyon, truly inhabiting a role which he seemed a far from obvious choice for. Otherwise, Joan Allen is suitably martyr-like as the accused Senator – if perhaps somewhat too worthy too be true in these cynical times. Bridges makes for an amusingly laid back chief executive, certainly a vast improvement on the current mediocre real-life inhabitant of the White House. Only Christian Slater lets the side down in a superfluous role. The film itself is generally less convincing, however. From the outset the White House seems a much less vibrant centre of decision-making than the fictitious Bartlet White House depicted in the TV series The West Wing. Nevertheless, the story proves genuinely compelling throughout most of its running time, before descending into an orgy of sickening sentimentalising towards the end. Nobody could reasonably disagree with the key tenets of Allen's closing speech to her prosecutors, yet the tone is completely undermined by the cheesy ‘stirring' music imposed on the background. The same is true of Bridges' speech at the end.

PLOT SPOILERS AHEAD: The Contender veers between being overly naïve and overly cynical in turn. Would any modern leading politician relinquish the opportunity for high office, by refusing to challenge an accusation against him or her, which could so easily be proven to be false? But on the other hand is it any less implausible that a State Governor would pay a woman to drive off a bridge just so he could rescue her and bask in the resulting good publicity? (or that he could find anyone prepared to do this?).

Ultimately, The Contender misses the point. It shouldn't matter a jot if a girl was promiscuous at college – she should still be able to ascend to high office. The Contender fudges the issue by revealing the girl at the party in question to have been a different person. Even so, for all its flaws, politics junkies will still enjoy it and if you want to see Oldman's first Oscar-winning performance, go see. Overall: Six out of ten.

Had mixed expectations about this one. Some reviews had compared it to Daniel Defoe's epic Robinson Crusoe. Others had said it was even more boring. In the end, it wasn't actually too bad although like Titanic, the opening scenes and the end were deadly dull – the end especially. Tom Hanks and Helen Hunt (whose names incidentally are both cockney rhyming slang) were both fine, Hanks particularly effective in the romantic attachment he developed towards a ball named ‘Wilson.'Some have suggested the ball should be given as Best Supporting Actornomination for its inscrutable performance. The plane crash was particularly scary. Hanks survived, but didn't even get a chance to choose a selection of songs, a book or a luxury before being washed up on the island.

Spoilers ahead: The ending was truly abyssmal. Hanks' relationship with Hunt had to be resolved in some way but the film seemed to completely run out of any inspiration once he came home (perhaps his plane home should have crashed as well!) Alternative ending: Hanks' apartment: The party over, Hanks – tired and thin contemplates his new life alone. The doorbell rings. Irritated, Hanks goes to answer it. He looks around: no one is there – or is there? Wilson the ball sits on the doorstep. He is wearing sun glasses and a sombrero and has a bouquet of flowers lying in front of him. Hanks smiles a mysterious smile and winks at the camera.