A great adaptation of Alex Garland's best seller. A thrill ride to the end!

Rating: 10/10 (14 February 2000)

The beach is a luminous voyage into a paradise we all dream about but never find. It is a visual feast for the eyes that is incomparable in its beauty to any other film in recent history.

The beginning grabs you right away. Snake blood is on the menu, and Daffy is lurking behind the mosquito netting, waiting to send Richard on a trip he will never forget.
The whole scene with Daffy was extremely well done. Carlysle was perfection! And Richard's little comedic nuances were hilarious....
The cinematography was also splendid, and the underwater shots took my breath away. The pumping soundtrack was fantastic, so well suited to the story.
Leonardo played Richard just as I imagined he would be like in the book - a cocky know it all, manipulative, funny, charismatic, and then frighteningly mad. The eyes told the story. He gave Richard an edge that in some ways made him sympathetic, I thought.
The analogies of blood and water are interesting in the darker parts of the movie at the end. I found it fascinating to watch Richard in his madness, and then in his desperation after he was shocked back to reality and cleansed by the pure clean waterfall.
The shocking twist at the end was just right. It gave us just what Boyle said it would give us - the tension and suspense excluding the blood and gore.
I loved the followup ending because it was so true to the book. It gave us exactly the scene that we see in the last paragraph of the novel by Garland - he still hears from Keaty, he still thinks of Francoise, but Richard's expression told the story - you could see his "memory" of the lessons he learned...the innocence he lost...are still vivid in his mind.
I thought the middle was edited poorly, and had no flow. The love triangle was not developed enough to make it worth while, but the fantastic first and last acts more than made up for it's middle act flaws! I thought the video sequence was a blast - it went along so well with the reasons why Richard's brain was so muddled: brought home the idea that Richard has no experience to draw on but his video game tactics when confronted with problems - it is his only background when making tough decisions about the problems he is now encountering....
The acting was fabulous from the supporting cast to Leonardo's brilliant performance. I loved Patterson Joseph as Keaty, and Guillame was so sweet as Etienne, Virginie has a natural screen presence and beauty that is so refreshing next to so many of those "fake" Hollywood actresses we are subjected to now, and Carlysle as usual was perfect in his madness. Tilda Swinton's Sal was everything I had imagined in the book, and I felt the twist in the relationship between she and Rich really did add something to the story that was missing in the book.....it gave Bugs a substantial reason to hate Rich, something the book never did.
Leonardo took us through this journey with amazing ease and honesty. Seeing him meeting challenge after challenge in this role with such accurate and precise brilliance makes me realise again what a gift he is. Paradise really only exists inside of one's soul..a soul at peace. Richard discovered that through his experience on The Beach, and boy, was it a trip!
I give the movie 4 of 5 stars.