Worth watching but gets sidetracked

Rating: 7/10 (24 March 2011)

*spoiler* "For both book and movie" I wanted to like this movie allot more than I did, if you read the book, I can't really understand why they deviated from the original story so much and why they added some unnecessary characters.
Suffice to say that in the book the escape was much more structured, the harrowing trek to the Siberian camp not told in the movie and the interrogation scenes were watered down and told in a different way.
The unity of purpose and resilience of the group and the depth of these individuals were not really drawn upon neither were all of the people that assisted them in their journey. The extraordinary unselfish hospitality of the Tibetans or their communal culture was hardly depicted at all.
In the end the movie just ran out of steam and I would have appreciated an additional layer of realism, one that would have better exemplified the determination of the human condition on a level that I don't think was truly successful in the film. This movie should be more about the people and not just the visuals.
I attribute this to the lack of 'pace' in the movie 'forgive the pun' and a weak screenplay. I still liked the movie but it missed the mark to becoming a true 'classic'. I understand that a movie is not supposed to be the book but in this case even though the acting was superb, it missed the depth of the human element that the book exalted.