Forgotten and underrated

I remember it being pretty good.

It us what it is I guess. A well made film where nothing actually bad happens production wise, but neither does anything remarkable. To get this novel into movie length requires considerable shortening, and some of the choices with this film render parts of the story nonsensical.

Rush plays Javert absent any subtlety. A little bit Walsingham, a little bit Barbarossa, a little bit Fr Benedictus. A perfectly competent performance with little inspiration. Neeson does well to show us the animal inside Valjean but I got little sense of aging, of tiring. He has after all been hunted most of his life. We need that sense of exhaustion to have him plausibly on the barricades.

Thurman and Danes do well but this film marginalises their characters.

The film just didn't do enough to carry it into awards territory or even memorability.

I thought it was terrible.

I agree. The thing that makes it even worse in my case is that I thought the 2012 film, which swept up a ton of nominations at the Oscars, including Best Picture, was terrible. Why? It squeezed in so much of the plot in that 2 and a half hour run time that it was hard for me to care about anything going on in that movie.

"I have always valued my lifelessness."

was this even in theaters? like a wide release? i thought it was a direct to dvd movie