Not quite in David Lean's league

Rating: 7/10 (6 January 2011)

This is a good film that somehow manages not to be a great film. It brings to mind other stirring epics like BRIDGE ON THE RIVER KWAI and LAWRENCE OF ARABIA, and you wonder if David Lean would have made it a truly great movie. What the escapees endure during their 4,000-mile journey is vividly brought to life (the Gobi desert scenes are especially harrowing), but because Jim Sturgess's character is the only one with a back-story, there's a lack of involvement with who these people are, and this fatally diminishes your interest in their fate.
It's a far-fetched comparison, I know, but one of the best elements of THE PERFECT STORM was the way ALL the cast were fleshed-out characters, so that you really wanted each of them to somehow survive the great wave. Compare that with James Cameron's TITANIC: you know that 1,500 souls will perish, but the movie concentrates on a love-struck couple who weren't really there!
Colin Farrell does a great job with a Russian accent but his character seems particularly pointless. Excellent acting from Ed Harris and Saoirse Ronan evokes sympathy, but they remain just 'cyphers' - the token Yank, the token girl. Peter Weir's direction is, as always, flawless; there's a great sense of the vastness of the swamps and deserts and mountains they have to cross.
10/10 for the visuals, but only 6/10 for the writing.