For anybody who read the book and watched the movie...

"Did the movie follow the book?"

Loosely. I'll list some of the bigger differences:

- In the book, Ben didn't know the guy that Madec shot.

- In the book, Madec's rifle was a .358 Magnum and Ben's was a .22 Hornet. That distinction became an important one at the end of the book. In the movie, both rifles are chambered for the exceedingly ordinary .308 Winchester.

- In the book, Ben had to survive in the desert longer than in the movie, and survived by killing birds and lizards with his slingshot and eating them raw and lightly cooked in the sun, which didn't happen in the movie.

- In the book, Madec shot Ben at one point; the bullet went through his forearm. Ben never got shot in the movie, i.e., all of Madec's shots at him missed.

- In the book, Ben buried himself in the ground, using the rubber tubes from his slingshot to breathe and hear, in order to put himself into a position to ambush Madec with his slingshot, and he shot him with it multiple times (each time Madec tried to go for his gun). That didn't happen at all in the movie, and he only shot Madec once with the slingshot.

- The book's ending was drastically different. Ben was arrested and was in jail for a couple/few days, because no one believed his story, not even his own uncle whom he lived with. They all thought that Madec's story made a lot more sense. Ben was finally exonerated by the doctor presenting several pieces of evidence, the most damning against Madec being the doctor's conclusion that the prospector was killed by the bigger, heavier bullet (.358 Magnum), and the smaller, lighter bullets (.22 Hornet) were fired into him after he was dead. In the movie, Ben was free to go after just one question from the sheriff, and then they tacked on the bizarre Madec-escaping-via-helicopter-and-coming-back-for-revenge thing.

"In your opinion, which one was better?"

The book, by far. Books in general tend to go into far more detail about what the protagonist is going through; what he's thinking. Because the movie glossed over and left out so many things, it didn't have anywhere near the intensity of the book.