During the course of this truly mediocre rendition of The Count of Monte Cristo, my favorite book of all time, I kept wondering where the fault lay.
Was it in the incredibly flawed script that took major liberties with the work for no apparent reason, condensing key plot events to meaningless sound bytes and drawing paper-thin characters that lacked any real relationship with the title character, including the spiteful archvillian rivals and the long-lost love interest? Probably.
Perhaps it was the atrocious cinematography, which although darkly stylized tended to obscure the images rather than enhance them.
Terrible editing which actually staggered away from some of the films' beautiful shots definitely helped to shorten my attention span.
Thoroughly mediocre performances, at least with the case of Luis Guzman due to poor and ill-suited casting choices, further ruined the beautiful story.
All in all, I would say that this medley of flat and trivial filmmaking backed by its impressive budget and loud advertising will prevent any chance of a good adaptation of The Count of Monte Cristo from surfacing for quite some time.
Was it in the incredibly flawed script that took major liberties with the work for no apparent reason, condensing key plot events to meaningless sound bytes and drawing paper-thin characters that lacked any real relationship with the title character, including the spiteful archvillian rivals and the long-lost love interest? Probably.
Perhaps it was the atrocious cinematography, which although darkly stylized tended to obscure the images rather than enhance them.
Terrible editing which actually staggered away from some of the films' beautiful shots definitely helped to shorten my attention span.
Thoroughly mediocre performances, at least with the case of Luis Guzman due to poor and ill-suited casting choices, further ruined the beautiful story.
All in all, I would say that this medley of flat and trivial filmmaking backed by its impressive budget and loud advertising will prevent any chance of a good adaptation of The Count of Monte Cristo from surfacing for quite some time.