Bordering on the tortuous

Rating: 3/10 (7 June 2006)

This should have been an absorbing if not great film. I'd not read the book and taken all reasonable steps to avoid press coverage and interviews, so the plot was fresh to me at least. But it was a long, drawn-out affair, with historical detail shovelled inelegantly into the lives of characters who didn't really seem to develop any identity, nor any convincing interest in each other. There were some ingenious plot ideas hidden in there somewhere, but perhaps even this lengthy film did not have the space they needed to be revealed in a manner that did them justice.
Perhaps this was simply an unfilmable story - better suited to a quality many-part TV adaptation perhaps, if anything at all. Pity though.