Worst movie of the year??

Rating: 1/10 (2 May 2001)

Few words can adequately describe quite how bad this movie is. Having not read the book, I didn't come with expectations of how the characters should look or act. There is not a single moment of truth in this film - in other words, the 'actors' (and I use the term loosely) always look as if they're play-acting in a film. None of them become the characters they are meant to be portraying. Many of them look as if they want to laugh. If the characters are Greek or Italian the would, in reality, speak Greek or Italian. This being a film for the English speaking world, instead they use accented English. It is amusing when someone reads aloud from a letter written in Greek - which is seen on screen - and does so in English. But the problem really was the variety of accents. Was there no voice coach on this film? Not one of the actors comes close to voicing 'Greek-English'. Penelope Cruz sounds determinedly Spanish while John Hurt and Christian Bale have obviously been studying Tomi Conti's lamentable accent in Shirly Valentine. David Morrisey - a fine actor who has appeared in many British TV productions - gives a woeful performance as a German, with another accent of no fixed abode. Nicolas Cage - vastly overrated as an actor - is dead in the eyes and never brings Captain Corelli alive for one moment. Given that Hurt is a brilliant actor, Bale wonderful in American Psycho and Cruz amazing in All About My Mother, the performances they give in this film are superficial and extremely disappointing.
The film - mercifully short at around 2 hours - looks as if it were cobbled together, so bad is the narrative. There is no sense of time or pace and the crowd scenes have obviously been cobbled together using local extras (I presume). During the war scenes, dead people are artfully arranged on the ground, false dollops of blood on their shoulders or backs. There is no sense of the horror of war. Noone seems particularly frightened when they're being shot at.
No one seems to have aged or developed during the course of the film - with the exception of some obviously false facial hair on Christian Bale. John Madden, who directed the wonderful Mrs Brown, is perhaps out of his depth bnut has not been aided by the script or the performers.
On the plus side (yes, there is one) the scenery is wonderful and because of that, thousands will probably flock to the island where it was filmed. At least the director of photography did a good job.
If there is a worse big budget film this year, I will be extremely surprised. Save your money; Don't go.