Good, but more could have been done with it.

Rating: 7/10 (13 May 2010)

The first half an hour of 'The Beach' gave the impression that it was a film about extremes. Whether it's the completely foreign world of horrible hotel rooms and snake blood DiCaprio's 'Richard' finds himself in, or the suicidal madness of Carlyle's 'Daffy', or the pursuit of absolute perfection in the beach itself, all these things seemed to be presenting the film as either highly dramatic or deeply philosophical. With such a set up, I personally hoped for this film to stay with me for a while for one of these reasons. However, neither one seemed to materialise, or at least not strongly. Screenings to background tourists of 'Apocalypse Now' at the beginning of the film resonates with the theme of the madness of solitude, but Richard's madness seems all too sudden to be convincing. Dramatically, whilst the plot moved along at a reasonable pace, the ending seemed weak, with the release of the island people back to their own lives being fairly anti-climactic. Maybe it was some sort of metaphor how paradise will always let you down, but I was fairly underwhelmed.
The acting was strong throughout, but the characters were fairly two dimensional except for the core three, which isn't ideal when the story is focused on a small community and the tensions within it. I also found that the soundtrack ruined parts of it for me. Whilst I love Moby's 'Porcelain' as a song, I felt it completely removed the exotic beauty of the moment they see the beach. I would have much rather had something more anonymous playing. That's fairly trivial, but was quite a poignant let down for me.
Whilst this seems heavily critical, I'm only writing the review in such a manner because I am generally a big fan of Boyle's, and thus rate him highly, so looked for a lot in this film. It is still clever, thought provoking and the cinematography is beautiful. Richard is, on the most part, well crafted and consistent, and moments of this film really did stay with me afterwards.