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Les Miserables Customer Reviews (1 - 3 of 41 Reviews)

Striving but not really succeeding
It's obviously not easy to compress for the screen something as complex, vast, and subtle as Hugo's novel, particularly when the focus of the book is internal and a movie is necessarily something that is focused on the external. Coupled to these difficulties comes the inevitable Hollywood fixation on test market inputs, happy endings, and schlock-horror-thrills violence. The result is a movie like this, which starts moderately well and then ambles off the rails around the mid-way point.

Liam Neeson is an accomplished actor, but you wouldn't necessarily know that from this movie. His Jean Valjean lacks nuance, perhaps because he's forced into portraying situations that are at times in conflict with the essence of who Valjean is supposed (pace Hugo) to be. His redemption scene is brief and superficial, and his supposed inner torment during the crucial trial scene (in which he ultimately elects to confess his true identity in order to save the idiot in the dock) resembles nothing so much as a man trying to determine which flavor of ice cream to select from the freezer. The only bright spot is Uma Thurman's performance, which is both unexpectedly accomplished and deeply moving. If only Neeson could have produced a performance to match this would have made the movie worth watching.

As for the fabricated love-story conclusion which owes nothing to Hugo and everything to Hollywood, the less said about that the better except for the masterful camera work, in which Valjean's spiritual euphoria is brilliantly conveyed by a long tracking shot that gradually opens up from the gray of the quayside to include finally the features of Paris and the open sky.

If you enjoyed Hugo's book you'd be much better off seeing the French version with Gerard Depardieu, or better still find the wonderful 1990 interpretation starring Jean-Paul Belmondo, which avoids all the normal pitfalls of bringing a huge book to the screen while capturing the essence and subtlety of Hugo's masterpiece.

I never saw the play
But i really liked this movie.......I have also shared it with some friends and they liked it. It may not be totally like the play but it is still a worth while film.

1st Half Good 2nd half dissaster
Let me start of by saying that Les Miserables is a huge book and the thought of trying to get that whole book into a movie is impossible. In order to do such a think the script writter must make some liberties to accomplish the means.

The first half of the movie is pretty good, it stays true to the story and the things that are cut are are things that are appropriate to cut out. I thought the story flowed as well as it possibly could and one could easily understand what was going on even if one had not read the book. I thought it was well acted with great performances from the actor/actress who played Javert and Fantine.

Let me say some of the liberties and things they cut out of the second half did not sit well with me. First off, the Ternardiers are hardly in this movie. They are there just for Jean Val Jean to pick up Cossette. The Ternardiers play such a huge part of the book to have them almostly completely cut out of the movie, was to me, stupid. The Ternardier daugthers aren't even in the movie which is hard to stomache when Eponine plays such a big part and the sons are not directly connected to the Ternardiers at all. Marious grandfather was also left out of the film as well.

The Jean Val Jean in the book would never have beaten up Javert to escape, he would never have slapped Cossette and he would never have walked happily around at the end when Javert killed himself. Jean Val Jean was so non violent that he didn't even shoot at anyone when he was in the barricade.

The thing that upset me the most was Marius. Marius to me, in the film was creepy. The way he stocked Cossette in the film and was very aggressive was almost sickening. He pretty much gives her his poem and then invites her outside for a "booty call" or a makeout party. I didn't feel any love at all between Marius and Cossette to me it was more lust than anything.

Stick with the musical or the book and skip this movie.

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