Too long - too slow

Rating: 3/10 (27 January 2004)

I was very disappointed by this film. After reading all of the positive comments, I was expecting a masterpiece and the result was far from it. I found both the principle character and his brother not at all likeable from the start and this took away from identifying with them later in the film. It was also unnecessarily long in many places. I thought that it did capture the atmosphere of the time very well and as a historical document, it is probably a worthy production (though I wouldn't know enough about it to be able to spot inaccuracies if there were any). The performances were also good but not good enough to keep the slow plot interesting. Overall, I found it unentertaining and predictable. 3 out of 10.