Handsome and shallow

Rating: 5/10 (8 October 2012)

"The Beach" is a Di Caprio vehicle gone south. This is even more obvious 12 years after its original release. Di Caprio, then a baby-faced, attractive star, fresh from the success of Titanic, plays Richard a handsome backpacker in a postcard-pretty Thailand (minus the shabby hotel) populated by many other attractive youngsters.
Given the premises, this could have easily turned into an over-bloated ad for fizzy drinks, but luckily some darkness is infused into the story,via several bizarre plot twists. The first one involves Robert Carlyle, who worked already with Boyle in the glorious Trainspotting.
Carlyle's cameo is dark and disturbing. It takes place right at the beginning and it is a sign that all will not be well. The middle part is light-hearted. Richard gets acquainted with a couple of stunning-looking French models (I mean, tourists) and they travel searching for paradise on earth.
What they find is a sort of hippie community, living on a hidden beach, next door to a marijuana plantation guarded by armed thugs. Not my idea of paradise, but stillIf we forgot about the ominous signs, now it is time to get our memory refreshed.
The hippie colony is run by a weird Tilda Swinton (not a big stretch for her playing weirdo) and her iron fist will bring nothing but misfortune to everybody. Anyway, the hippies are not painted as altruistic and kind. They are more selfish, lazy people running away from responsibilities and their demise is welcomed with a feeling of retribution. The end feels abrupt and much over the top, compared with the relative mildness of the rest of the movie.
Overall, Di Caprio already showed strong acting skills, but the whole – thin – plot revolves too much around him and eventually collapses in its shallowness