I wanted to but couldn't!

Film Perfection

A waste of 90 minutes of my life

There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

Jean Valjean (Liam Neeson)is a Frenchman who ends up being imprisoned for stealing a loaf of bread. However, Valjean manages to escape from prison and goes on the run. Valjean does his best to set-up a new life for himself and turn his back on his old ways. The film follows Valjean and Javert in a 20 year cat-and-mouse battle and the impact that all of this has on both of their lives.This is my first experience of "Les Miserables" so please bear with me while I try and explain what I felt were the pros and cons of this film;PROS;The cinematography was very good (cold and bleak) which is befitting as this reflects the general outlook for the majority of its citizens. The second thing that was also good were the set designs; clearly a lot of time, thought and effort had been spent on trying to capture the era and it succeeds in making the film look professional and authentic.Some of the performances here were excellent (particularly Geoffrey Rush and Uma Thurman). Javert initially pursue Valjean out of a sense of duty, but as time progresses it becomes more of an obsession and he slowly begins to lose touch with reality - Rush takes us through this journey impeccably and he's the best person in this film by a country mile. Uma Thurman's performance helps bring out the tragedy within her character; she's a pathetic figure and does some 'questionable' things, but she does these questionable things for all the right reasons so her character is someone who people can identify with. Uma Thurman is someone who is a better actress than people give her credit for and when you look at her performance here compared to films such as Pulp Fiction and Kill Bill (who are clearly mirror opposites to the character that she portrays here) then it's clear that she is a talented and diverse actress. Both Thurman and Rush definitely up this film a notch.Given the fact that the film in its basic form has something of a 'cat and mouse' narrative to it then it certainly had enough going for it to hold my interest.CONS; The first half of the film is quite engaging, but for me it started to lose impetus in the second half (it neither has the intrigue or suspense that the first half offered and seemed to meander quite a lot). We're once again introduced to an unnecessary romantic subplot which just ground the picture down.In all honesty I also had mixed feelings about our protagonist; on the one hand yes he's tried to turn his back on his former life and he has helped people along the way, but he also lied and deceived a lot of people as well. I suppose the good that he did outweighed the bad, but let's not pretend that he is in any way perfect.I also felt that there were gaps in the narrative that could have been filled; Valjean escapes from prison and then the film skips by a further 9 years by which time he has become mayor of the town. OK what happened in those 9 years? In some ways the gaps and jumps in the film do make it difficult to get to grips with some of the characters and make it hard to care about them at times.Liam Neeson is generally a good actor and I do like a lot of his films, but something just didn't click here when watching him in Les Miserables. When tough-talking or anything physical is required he's excellent, but he seemed to struggle a bit when any sort of emotion is required (maybe I'm biased and maybe the numerous action films I've seen Neeson in have clouded my judgement of him), but I standby my original assertion.Like Valjean himself this film is good most of the time rather than all of the time.

Les Miserables by Victor Hugo is a complex novel, describing the development of complex people shaping and shaped by history. This movie takes away all of that - the actors portray characters stripped of internal complexity. This gets a 4 because the actors seem to have recited the lines invented by the screenwriter as typed, but they were given lifeless, insincere pap to recite. The actors did a job, but I have more respect for the actors and writers who walked away and did not participate. I am not a "musical" person, but the Cameron Mackintosh musical and the 2012 movie made from it delve deeply into Victor Hugo's complex ideas, while this movie cuts all that away. Gratuitous Hollywood rewrite, fueled by nose candy, sold by star recognition, and filmed in low-cost Eastern Europe still recovering from ideological damage. You can almost smell the bean counters telling Yeglesias what expensive parts to omit. For example, the character of Eponine, the woman who loved Marius so much that she died in support of his love for Cosette, is entirely missing. Eponine's wrenching internal struggle, and the internal struggles of Fantine and Javert and Valjean, could have been portrayed by capable actors like Thurman and Rush and Neeson, but they would have needed months to prepare and many takes to get right. Too expensive.If you want undemanding entertainment that will consume two hours of your empty life without improving it, this movie do the job. Perhaps it will help you get a job doing the same kind of "review stuffing" that made this movie come out at 7.5; when all the IMDb reviews for both sexes all ages come out so statistically uniform, it is either heavily skewed by software robots, or by people paid to act like them. If you dislike musicals, the 1935 movie version, with Charles Laughton as Javert, portrays Victor Hugo's emotional story and character development more accurately. Laughton can say more in with a quivering lip in black and white than a minute of 1998 color film. It will be hard to find - I found this 1998 version in the bargain bin for 50 cents.

I have seen different film versions of this novel plus of course the famous play and read part of the book until I could no more. Sorry but M. Hugo's literature is not for everyone.Now, the original story of Jean Valjean has, as you know, a tragic ending. Poor Valjean dies in sadness because his son-in-law finds he is a convict and execrates him - somewhat exaggerated in my humble opinion for Valjean was notorious for his kindness and loved by his adopted daughter - not your typical criminal.Literally M. Hugo could have granted Valjean a happier ending, which would have been nice for readers, that is considering this has to be among the longest novels ever written. So hundreds of pages of tragic events plus plenty of philosophy -which takes up a whole good deal of the novel- could have perfectly been avoided to provide the reader with a more pleasant reminder. Precisely, what they do in this movie is avoid - literally omit- the tragic finale. Once Valjean is free of Javert's threat, the movie is over and you conclude -or at least assume- that there is a happy ending to a lifelong struggle.Acting is impeccable, Liam Neeson makes a great Valjean and Geofrey Rush's interpretation of Javert is stunning. You feel he's the real deal, an obsessed, cruel man who cannot withstand that his antagonist saved him from death or shame in more than one occasion.No doubts, one of my favorite movies of all times.

No, it doesn't have singing. What Billie August's Les Miserables does have, about the decades long 'chase' between ex-convict Jean Valjean and super-cop Javert,is really strong acting across the board, and what one might call 'handsomely mounted' production style, so it can be gritty, but it almost has the feel of a film from the 40's or 50's, only a little more modern. What I mean to say is I respect this on its own level, not quite like the 2012 film, though they each have their own merits and faults. But especially here, I loved Rush as Javert, a man who is so beholden to the ideal of the law that it buries him, ultimately. I could go on comparing the 2012 and 1998 films, and I want to try to avert it, except to say that I just preferred the story here, how it was told simply, no frills (and no romantic-love triangle just plain romantic interest between Marius and Cosette, the latter being more of a character than in the musical far as I could tell). For people like Valjean and Fantine, they each work their own ways in musical/dramatic film, so on that point it's not totally fair to compare. But I love Neeson as Valjean, and I love Thurman (albeit without a Dream to Dream) as Fatine. And I was blown away by the ending, with the closure coming for both characters within the same locale. While the film may ultimately be TOO handsomely mounted in a way, or maybe the music is not super imaginative here, the story shone through here, and I could see the actors doing so much, under August's direction (and this is a guy who's done Ingmar Bergman so the man knows his character one-on-one drama), to elevate the melodrama into something potent and, for me, true. When Valjean and Javert have their face-offs, across the board they are convincing, tension-filled, but illuminating the moral dilemmas that both characters come across in the course of events. And there's plenty of subtlety to go around too. So, to recommend it would depend: do you want to see a, yes, condensed adaptation of the big-epic Hugo book, with big Hollywood stars and lots of money poured into sets and extras and squalor and... Oh, that's out now in theaters as well? It's a tough call, and you'll have to come to both modern versions both your own way. For me, I'd be interested to see any version of this compelling tale, but at the end of the day, I go for August's professionally drawn, classically shot but deeply felt direction, because, overall, for the medium of film it works.