A total waste of time

Rating: Null/10 (29 April 2001)

I caught the last hour of this disaster on ABC last night, and am grateful I only endured an hour. Judging from the other reader comments, it was three hours long. Dear God! The hour I sat through seemed like ten...and the final scene suffered from the slow pacing, endlessly repetitive tuneless music trying unsuccessfully to emulate the great Victor Young, and a pitiful performance from the female lead who I had never heard of. She should go back to acting school! As for Brad Pitt and Anthony Hopkins, they both looked uncomfortable - but not nearly as uncomfortable as audiences must have felt in a theater sitting through this pretentious attempt. When is Hollywood going to stop trying to redo films that have already been done - and done much better. As for the direction and editing, oh, dear... ! Films like this only underscore my growing aversion to too many contemporary films preying on public adulation for name actors and forgetting that without a good script and competent direction, a film must inevitably fail...as this one certainly has.