This is nothing new; he’s been mangling basic plot details for years. His review of Ronin reads like he watched a different film entirely.
Those are two adjectives that don’t generally go together.
Point of note; in the book, the thrust of the story isn’t vengeance or justice, and in fact the denouement seems almost tacked on to satisfy the reader (or perhaps the author, Alice Sebold, who was herself a victim of a brutal rape). The story is about the main character detachedly observing the disintegration of her family from her post-murder limbo state. It’s a well written book but it goes off the rails (IMHO) about sixty pages from the end. I haven’t seen the movie but find it disappointing that it is getting such poor press, as Jackson handled similar material with deft humor and tragic inevitability in Heavenly Creatures.
I realize the posts I’m quoting here are several months old already, but I wanted to address them for the benefit of anyone who saw the movie but didn’t read the book.
What Freudian Slit describes is indeed what happened in the book. I guess they changed it for the movie, but she was referring to the book. I’m not surprised they did change it, as that was arguably the most disturbing thing about the book. That may seem strange to say about a book that begins with an adolescent girl being raped and murdered, but the book was clear about this being a terrible crime and a tragedy that hurt the entire family, while we were apparently supposed to feel happy for the protagonist when she possessed another girl’s body and used it to have sex.
Making it even worse in my mind was the fact that Susie could easily have taken this opportunity to tip the police off about her killer’s location. Heck, she could have done this AND had sex with the guy, it only would have taken a minute. She’d been watching from the afterlife, so she knew the detective suspected George Harvey but had been unable to find him. Perhaps more to the point, she also knew her father suspected Mr. Harvey and that her father had been nearly destroyed by the fact that her killer had never been brought to justice and that his own efforts in that direction had failed. I think having Mr. Harvey arrested, tries, and convicted would have been a lot more satisfying resolution than having a ghost drop an icicle on him. That’s just stupid.
I just finished the book on Sunday, and had the DVD available to me so I attempted to watch it on Monday. I reeeeally did not like how the movie was done, and found myself giving up on it about half way through. I went on IMDB afterward anyway to look at trivia and goofs, and saw that in the movie
Mr. Harvey dies by falling off a cliff, something like that.
I haven’t read the book, but I enjoyed the movie. Comparing a movie to a book is like comparing a live concert to a studio recording. They are rarely going to be an equal experience.
He isn’t caught in the movie, either. He gets older(years go by), we assume we rapes more people, and then when he hits on this one girl who rejects him, an icicle falls and hits him on the head. He falls off a cliff and tumbles down, dead.
Read the book years a go. Missed the movie when it came out as well as the DVD and Blu ray initially. Just saw it over the weekend. I thought it was very good. No idea why it got the bad publicity.
Pretty much everything they cut was not strictly necessary to the film and the acting of all the main characters was excellent, especially Tucci. Why the hate?