I love Joseph Conrad's novels, but the films are another thing. They virtually never work, and this is just about the worst ever. It's extremely rare and I don't know if it was ever even released in the UK. I know it never got as far as Scotland, for which we can thank Hadrian's Wall. The truth is, the Romans didn't build it, we did to keep films this bad out!
This was obviously a pet project for Bob Hoskins who produced it, but you'd not know it to look at him. He's terrible in the lead. No character, no soul, nothing. Well, he is funny a couple of times, eating his dinner with his hat on or his death scene, but I don't think it was intentional. But compared to the rest of the cast, Eddie Izzard hopeless as the Russian ambassador, Jim Broadbent doing his Only Fools and Horses bit as Inspector Heat, Chris Bale's baleful idiot brother, he almost looks good. But then with the lead going to Patricia Arquette, who wouldn't? She's been worse, but that still doesn't make her any good in this. Her Winnie Verloc is pitiful in all the wrong ways. Why do they hire her? The only consolations are the scenes with Gerard Depardieu and Robin Williams in the restaurant. They work and sum up some of the spirit of the novel even though the two are pretty dire in their scenes in the rest of the film.
The adaptation is faithful but dead. It tells the story but not the characters or the themes and the direction by scripter Christopher Hampton isn't very good either. Honestly, even if you like Conrad you couldn't care less about this one. It slipped into the TV schedules late night last week without any warning, and with a film this bad that's probably just to hide ITV's embarrassment at showing it. Badly disappointing and then some.
This was obviously a pet project for Bob Hoskins who produced it, but you'd not know it to look at him. He's terrible in the lead. No character, no soul, nothing. Well, he is funny a couple of times, eating his dinner with his hat on or his death scene, but I don't think it was intentional. But compared to the rest of the cast, Eddie Izzard hopeless as the Russian ambassador, Jim Broadbent doing his Only Fools and Horses bit as Inspector Heat, Chris Bale's baleful idiot brother, he almost looks good. But then with the lead going to Patricia Arquette, who wouldn't? She's been worse, but that still doesn't make her any good in this. Her Winnie Verloc is pitiful in all the wrong ways. Why do they hire her? The only consolations are the scenes with Gerard Depardieu and Robin Williams in the restaurant. They work and sum up some of the spirit of the novel even though the two are pretty dire in their scenes in the rest of the film.
The adaptation is faithful but dead. It tells the story but not the characters or the themes and the direction by scripter Christopher Hampton isn't very good either. Honestly, even if you like Conrad you couldn't care less about this one. It slipped into the TV schedules late night last week without any warning, and with a film this bad that's probably just to hide ITV's embarrassment at showing it. Badly disappointing and then some.