The reader ... will be finished sooner than the viewer.

Rating: 5/10 (8 June 2009)

Normally I am not a fan of Kate Windslet. I keep getting haunted by atrocious drooly scenes from Titanic and the like. However I must say I am quite impressed in this case. She creates a fierce and at the same time tender character.
But that's about it. She appears to be the single interesting character in the entire movie. All side actors simply go away, have no meaning and form no true addition. Of course we have the male lover, but, this may be highly personal, to me they should have casted somebody else. This guy looks too dumb, too plain, too old and argues as an adult. No wonder Kate has to call him kid throughout the movie, he acts and looks like he's at least 17. Furthermore there is no difference between the young Michael Berg and the Michael Berg a couple of years later. Finally he has a German accent. This reminded me of these old war movies from the sixties where the Germans speak English with a German accent. Hence: annoying!
Besides a good Kate and an annoying David Kross (playing Micheal) the rest of the movie truly does not matter. The plot is extremely straightforward (but does go back and forth in time for no apparent reason, it is not like these flashback are revelations or anything). It is an endless road with numerous meaningless sideways. What about the boy's family? There is one scene in which they wonder where he was the past afternoon. How about all the other afternoons? What happened to the family anyways? Why put in a scene if these people don't seem to matter anyway? And am I suppose to truly feel that this guy loves her so much? What you need is not a dozen or so sex scenes, a group of cute girls that appear and disappear or an ex-wive, but an actor.
*** HUGE SPOILER AHEAD *** Why does she not tell she's illiterate? And how on earths name is a war tribunal unable to find out this sort of vital knowledge? To speak of it, the court is a farce. "I need a sample of your handwriting." Are you a judge or a prosecutor or a stenographer? And what use is the conversation between Micheal and his law teacher, another meaningless character, about this subject?
*** AND MORE SPOILERS *** And I could go on. In fact, I will go on. Why isn't the guy writing back, he is unable to open himself up to any girl now? Why does she starts a relationship with a kid in the first place, to forget about things? Why does she suddenly leave her apartment when she gets a promotion? To escape life? I don't want to have everything written out for me, there needs to be room for contemplation so to say and people make a lot of erratic decisions throughout their life, but too many why's and loose ends is definitely unsatisfying.
Now I could have forgiven the movie all these flaws and recommend it as worthwhile, but since it runs for over two hours that is not going to happen. Long movies are okay, but long mediocre movies are simply bad. Steer away unless you are a fan of Kate.
Verdict: 5