Les Miserables:6 BEERS (Not good, not bad)

Jean Valjean (Liam Neeson) steals some bread because he's hungry and gets caught. He does 19 years of hard labor and is released. His first night out he stays with a priest and attempts to steal his silver. Valjean is caught again and returned to the priest who corroborates Valjean's story that the silver was a gift. The priest tells him to go and live a good life. It's later and Valjean has become a successful businessman and the mayor of a town. He does his best to look out for others but some slip by him, like Fantine (Uma Thurman) who works in his factory. She had a child out wedlock and is fired, turning to a life of prostitution to suppor her kid. Valjean learns of this and does his best to help her. But he has problems of his own, a guard named Javert (Geoffrey Rush) from the prison where Valjean did time was recently appointed as an Inspector in the town where he's mayor. Valjean soon flees with Javert in hot pursuit. Fantine's daughter Cosette (Claire Danes) is rescuced by Valjean and the two go to live in Paris all the while Javert continues his search.

With the myriad of past tellings of Victor Hugo's book it makes you wonder why this film was made. If it's not better than it's predecessors, and it's not, then why bother? While this newest interpretation does remain true to the origional it's lacking. This film has no guts, nothing to sink your teeth into. Sure the characters are in the right spots and say the right lines but they don't seem to care. Neeson was average at best. Danes was annoying, more of a whiney teenager than a young woman wanting to see some of the world around her. Rush's Javert came off more as a loser who needed a life than the dogmatic and relentless inspector from the book. This newest version of Les Miserables is nothing special.

Official Les Miserables Page

Photo from Columbia TriStar