#361
Post
by cdnchris » Fri Jan 23, 2015 1:20 pm
No, not a great film by any means, probably not even passable, but you're right in that it has some good moments, a decent score, and its cast actually makes it worthwhile: von Sydow makes for a fun villain, Plummer is good, and J. T. Walsh probably steals the film from everyone else. Harris may be the only one who doesn't seem to be fully in it, though.
The extended version is only better in that it inserts a lot of the good moments from the book that didn't make it into the original film, including some more characters (the mother obsessed with Elvis actually gets screen time instead of just showing up as a background character in a couple scenes for example), and it changes the context of a few scenes. The big disappointment with it is that the edit was made for television and I remember it cut out some of the gorier elements (and looking online I'm reminded it cut out the language as well, including those humourous notes left for Walsh's character). At 3-4 hours, though, it's definitely too long, but closer to the book (which was a fun read) yet still has the fairly lame ending. If the Blu-ray includes it I would definitely pick it up. If not I'd probably pass, though the commentary with Heston intrigues me.
And that's a good question about Heston. I remember he did a film called Alaska with his dad co-starring, but then nothing after that. (IMDB says he did a documentary called The Search for Michael Rockefeller a few years ago but that's it). Always figured his dad got him his directing gig but obviously he didn't take off with it if that was the case.
