A missed opportunity....

Rating: 5/10 (17 February 2000)

Having waited months for this film, the final result was very disappointing. Originally seeing a trailer way back in June of '99 I immediately read the book, which was amazing. However the film just doesn't work. The story is changed way too much, characters and events left out or changed for unknown reasons and the new additions detract from it. People with me who hadn't read Alex Garlands novel found it difficult to follow some themes and the terrible video game sequence just capped off the pretty boring middle piece.
Too much has been crammed into a short period of time and as such the audience catches only hints of the information they need to understand why people act as they do.
This is all annoying as an opportunity has definitely been missed. The scenery is perfect and the cast really well assembled, DiCaprio makes a great Richard. Why, why, why did they have to mess around with the story line.
Plus just to annoy me even more, the great music which accompanied that original trailer didn't appear once!