Alex-508 Reviews

The Count of Monte Cristo (1998)

One the Greatest Tales of Revenge, but only available in novel form

[6/10 · 7 December 2005]

I like Gerard Depardieu, and I liked much of this movie. I am huge of the book, which provides amazing insight in human suffering, redemption, and revenge. The butchery of the script was benign relative to the recent Hollywood remake (a complete disaster - "It was a nice film about something, but it was not the Count of Monte Cristo."), but apparently the writer(s) could not resist temptation to alter the ending - which was particularly galling given the mostly faithful recreation of the book up to the point of the conclusion. I personally was bitter - you can't take a story of revenge and remake it into Harlequin romance novel. If you know the story, you know what they should have done, and you know what they probably did. Given the time investment in this movie to watch the whole thing, I literally could not believe it as it became apparent that the sell-out was going to happen. They were so close, and that just made the experience that much more sour.

The Count of Monte Cristo (1998)

Agreed, best version I've seen

[6/10 · 7 September 2004]

but once again, there is this apparently uncontrollable desire to rape the storyline. Whereas the most recent Hollywood version leaves the reservation early and never attempts to regain a relationship with the source material, the Bravo edition tries to stay on track. However, several story lines are materially altered - to the point of creating new characters. If you familiar with the book, you will probably understand how radically the ending is altered when you know that Haydee is only a marginal character with about 5 minutes of total screen time, if that. Why do people have to tamper so much with the original? I mean, you'd think they'd have a pretty good idea of how the ending is, since in this case, the book has only been around for a couple hundred years.

This was the best version, IMO, but there is a certain degree of bitterness involved when you watch for 6 hours only to find that the ending is a cop out (Yes, that's a SPOILER if you've read the book, because it's super easy to see how it WOULD end if the writers from WHEN HARRY MET SALLY were in charge). Regarding spoiling the end, I only wish I had known in advance (6 hours worth of viewing in advance, I might add) that they were going to rape the ending, I would have THANKED the reviewer...