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jazzfishAgustín Díaz Yanes (dir.), Alatriste
An object lesson in how not to film a series of books. The Captain Alatriste novels are set in Spain at about the same time as Dumas's Three Musketeers novels. Five of the books are currently available in English, with a sixth not yet translated from the Spanish and at least three more on the way.
The production of the film is astounding: big hats, dusty streets, carriages and dresses and swords and all manner of gorgeous period accoutrements. Can we just accept that it looks amazing and is great for having on in the background if you want to watch the pretty? The acting is all decent, and in some cases (the actress Maria, or Viggo Mortensen's Captain Alatriste) top-notch.
It falls down in the script department. The first five books are compressed into under three hours, with all the success one might expect. It's not terribly coherent except for following the same few characters, and doesn't really feel like it amounts to anything. Plot lines are introduced and dispensed with in the space of half an hour or so, and major subplots (such as why the King is stealing his own gold, or what the relation is between Angelica, Malateste, and the Inquisitor) are never really explained.
If one wants to watch Viggo Mortensen in Golden-Age-Spain eye candy for three hours I highly recommend it. Even the plot isn't /bad/. You can see pretty clearly where each book ends, and think "oh, that really would have been better if they'd bothered to flesh it out at all." I enjoyed it; mostly I'm disappointed that it wasn't a lot better, or at least spread out over several movies.
An object lesson in how not to film a series of books. The Captain Alatriste novels are set in Spain at about the same time as Dumas's Three Musketeers novels. Five of the books are currently available in English, with a sixth not yet translated from the Spanish and at least three more on the way.
The production of the film is astounding: big hats, dusty streets, carriages and dresses and swords and all manner of gorgeous period accoutrements. Can we just accept that it looks amazing and is great for having on in the background if you want to watch the pretty? The acting is all decent, and in some cases (the actress Maria, or Viggo Mortensen's Captain Alatriste) top-notch.
It falls down in the script department. The first five books are compressed into under three hours, with all the success one might expect. It's not terribly coherent except for following the same few characters, and doesn't really feel like it amounts to anything. Plot lines are introduced and dispensed with in the space of half an hour or so, and major subplots (such as why the King is stealing his own gold, or what the relation is between Angelica, Malateste, and the Inquisitor) are never really explained.
If one wants to watch Viggo Mortensen in Golden-Age-Spain eye candy for three hours I highly recommend it. Even the plot isn't /bad/. You can see pretty clearly where each book ends, and think "oh, that really would have been better if they'd bothered to flesh it out at all." I enjoyed it; mostly I'm disappointed that it wasn't a lot better, or at least spread out over several movies.
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Date: 2010-05-14 01:50 pm (UTC). . . oh. That would do it. And is pretty seriously disappointing, too. *sigh*
I didn't think it was easy at all to find in the states :).
It wasn't. :)