The Claim | | Cast : | Peter Mullan, Wes Bentley | | Director : | Michael Winterbottom | | Studio : | Mgm/Ua Studios | | Format : | Color, Closed-captioned, Widescreen, Dolby | | Released Date : | January 01, 2000 | | DVD Released Date : | December 26, 2001 | | Language : | Unknown (Dubbed), English (Dubbed), French (Subtitled), Spanish (Subtitled), Spanish (Dubbed), English (Original Language), Spanish (Original Language) | | Audience Rating : | R (Restricted) | | | BUY THIS DVD FROM AMAZON |
Customer Reviews
| Rating |  | | Date | December 28, 2004 | | Summary | Visually stunning but ultimately unrewarding | Content
 | I really wanted to like this film, but it just doesn't come together. The acting and photography are wonderful but the directing is inadequate. It wasn't the film's length which bothered me, but rather the inability of the director to get the film's engine running. Michael Winterbottom is not a good storyteller and he seems more concerned with visuals than with character development. I was hoping for a film in the vein the Robert Altman's "McCabe and Mrs. Miller", but The Claim doesn't rise to that level. Yes, there is a sadness about the character's fate at the end of the film, but we really should be feeling something more than simple sadness. Set in the Sierra Nevada Mountains during the California gold rush, the picture "feels" right. The town looks cold and muddy and the actors really reflect the harsh environment of the old west. You come away feeling that this is the way it must have been. The "look" of the film is its greatest achievement and the reason for 3 stars. |
| Rating | | | Date | November 09, 2004 | | Summary | A Hardy Spin on the American Western | Content
| One of the most remarkable adaptations of a literary work I've seen. Frank Cottrell Boyce completely changes Thomas Hardy's classic The Mayor of Casterbridge - and actually betters it lifting it from its original setting and tailoring it into a tale of the American West during the Gold Rush. Some of Hardy's holes hold (predictable) difficulty for many modern readers, but Boyce's western retelling fills them in and lends strong plausibility. (There's a tad too much "faint, fall ill and die" for me in the Hardy original). Some have complained that Boyce went too far - but this is a movie "based" on the book not claiming to be a faithful retelling.
Director Michael Winterbottom proves to have an enormous eye emerging in bold style at once stylized and natural. He brings us here images that, once seen, burn, linger and haunt forever be it a Victorian mansion hauled across the frozen plains or a horse's immolation as on fire it gallops across the screen.
Winterbottom's cast is a strong one - none remaining as they initially seem, each changing before our eyes. Kinski, first strong and bitter gives one of her most tender heartbreaking performances, Wes Bentley, likeable and promising becomes petty and meddlesome. Milla Jovovich serves up, predictably, hearty and hot, yet more delicate than she would like to appear.
In all of this Peter Mullan's Daniel Dillon is the focus and the fulcrum by which the story hinges. He is never less than masterful. To see him early on nearly ravaged by youthful greed then watch him in age yearn for salvation that may never come or come too late, one cannot help but be riveted by his endeavor to make up by his plight and his attempt to change it.
The Claim is a remarkable film which, while it may take a bit of time to warm up to, burns its own unique reward in a way few modern Hollywood films can.
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| Rating | | | Date | September 08, 2004 | | Summary | Awful | Content
| Is this what we have sunk to? I find it unbelieveable that critics of Ebert and Roeper's calibre give this movie a good review. I don't know what depressed me more - the content (the guy who has a prostitute for every town he visits is our "romantic hero") or the acting (OK folks, we can see that you can do "dead pan" - isn't there anything else you learned in acting school?) There is a huge fire in the movie which could be construed as being a desperate attempt to bring some fire to dull, lifeless characters who adorn a dull, lifeless movie. |
| Rating | | | Date | August 18, 2004 | | Summary | Thomas Hardy? Not even Oliver Hardy! | Content
| After two hours of watching it, I still don't know what it was about. Yes, the scenery is fantastic, but a National Geographic film would have done more.
I applaud the acting of Milla Jovovich, and Nastassja Kinski. But, the kudos reviewers have given to Peter Mullen would have been better deserved if this were a silent movie. I hardly heard anything he said and there are no English subtitles offered on the dvd. As for Wes Bentley, that's acting? He kept the same expression when he was having sex as when he was having a gun pointed at him, or a co-worker being blown to "Kingdom Come" (that's a pun based on the movie). He makes Clint Eastwood look like Laurence Olivier.
The film is supposedly based on a Thomas Hardy book, but very loosely based, and the scriptwriters should have at least used Cliff Notes to have learned more about the story and the character development. They obviously fell asleep after the first couple of chapters and made up the rest.
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| Rating | | | Date | August 10, 2004 | | Summary | Too dark and snowy | Content
| I did not enjoy this movie. It is very dark. There is little colour. Just people wearing black against a backdrop of snow and more snow. It is hard to identify with the characters, for they either seem one dimensional or just too strange to understand. Some of the characters also speak in accents that are hard to understand. Also - what is with the minor storyline of the prostitute and the railway worker? I could barely understand what either of them said. It seems they either fell in love immediately and decided to get married, or they knew each other in San Francisco. Either way, it wasn't interesting enough to go back to find out.
This is based on the Mayor of Castlebridge by Thomas Hardy. If you want to see that story, buy the DVD of the same name. It is MUCH better. Especially the one with Cirian Hinds. Wonderful. |
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