Biggest Pile of Crap Ever!

It was no masterpiece, but I didn't find it THAT bad (I don't think I've ever watched a movie alll the way through if I thought it was total <bleep>).

The score and the cinematography were both good (not great, but good), and I thought Thomas Kretschmann's performance was excellent, given what he had to work with. The screenplay was weak and so was the dialogue; since the plot was chaotic to start with -- the book was a best seller, but not well-written -- the characters had to compel your interest.

Agreed it was a weak movie, but not in the top 250 worst of all time. Since I got it free from the library, I didn't shell out any money for it.

When I first heard about this book, it was supposedly SO wonderful. I called a New Age bookstore, they had one copy left and held it for me. It was very expensive (at that time) considering it's size.

I was very disappointed in it, I couldn't follow the "story", it didn't go into anything much about the main character, and I couldn't get past the bad writing. I ended up jotting down the "insites" and not trying to follow the story or make it believable in any way.

I just rented the movie, thinking it might be better, or at least have beautiful scenery.

I'm part way into it and already bored and don't understand it. It's like black and white, some guys are BAD and being chased, but who knows why.

I find myself wondering what happened to John's cat? He picked it up and said "want to go to Peru?" He was a school teacher, and yet called and got a plane ticket to Peru (he already had a passport on hand?) and is now there, living on what, his SAVINGS?

The basic rules of writing a book (and I suppose a movie) is to put enough details in to make people feel they know the person, and have it "make sense".

I keep getting hung up on the lack of details, and background and trying to make sense of it.

I thought this book should have been a non fiction, forget a story, just write about the insites and leave it at that.

And, if they wanted to make a movie from the insites, hire someone who knows how to write to write it.

Stays close to the book then.

"I am not a complete idiot, some parts are missing."

It's actually pretty much it's "own" philosophy. Redfield has some interesting ideas in the book, but he's a really bad writer, which carries over to the film since he co-wrote the screenplay. It's pretty much his own project, so you're right the story can't carry our interest, and the movie form itself prevented him from going as deeply into his ideas as I'm sure he'd have liked.


"The value of an idea has nothing to do with the honesty of the man expressing it."--Oscar Wilde