Bland

Rating: 5/10 (27 June 2014)

One of my pet peeves is when somebody writes a film review and says "It's not at all like the book". Well, guess what?? That's because it's NOT the book!!!!! It's an adaptation that must condense a story premise, introduce and develop characters, create story arcs and climaxes in 90 minutes based on a book that takes many hours or days to read. If you like the book so much, maybe you would be better off NOT seeing the film.
Now, for my review of this film. It's quite formulaic and predictable, has a tremendous amount of dialogue that has been stolen from classic novels and films, contains many pretentious and contrived scenes, and the casting of Hillary Swank was a huge mistake. On a rainy evening, this is a decent film to watch with your wife or special friend when it comes on HBO but strictly from a film perspective, it's not very memorable.