Product: Lorna Doone
Rating: 4.0
Carver Doone done with sympathy
I like period drama, I like British drama, and I like Sean Bean. That makes this a perfect triple header. And Mr. Bean delivers. While I would have liked the characters fleshed out a bit more, and WHY Lorna would prefer that dry stick John Ridd I don't know. That is never understood. He looks and acts like a Puritan. What makes the movie interesting is the character of Carver Doone, the illegitimate son and supposed heir to the Doones. The Doones are a clan of reivers, for all intents and purposes, disenfranchised and having to make their way outside the law, and Carver does all he can to hold them together, doing whatever it takes, usually under his father's orders. He has lost his wife and lives for his young son. But in a fit of charity, he rescued and brought to the Doones to raise, young Lorna, and that is his downfall. While Carver never seems to feel much romantic connection to Lorna, he is protective, and the character of Carver, as Mr. Bean plays it, is protective of those he cares about. Lorna comes off as a bit silly and willful. Her attraction to John Ridd seems inexplicable and more in line of a Romeo and Juliet forbidden fruit combined with teenage rebellion scenario, except she and John are not teenagers. The look Carver gives his father when, after all he has done for the Doones, his father proposes to set Carver, as a bastard, aside in favor of Lorna and her lover, Carver's enemy, is pure pathos. And it sparks all that comes after and costs Carver all he has cared about and protected, and the ultimate betrayal. If you're a fan of Sean Bean, watch this for his performance alone. But don't expect it to be like the book. (But then so few movies are).