The effect is mostly theatrical. The Dinner would make a good play but for all the time and place offered by one evening this adaptation of The Dinner is a film, a thriller, with scenes in the restaurant over a night when the family's cousins commit a heinous crime. As soon as the audience gradually learns the nature of the boys' act the story establishes effectively the link between the parents' pretensions to civility and the guys' descent into barbarism. What is more difficult to fold naturally into this charged cinematic scenario is the sprawling psychological back story of the novel. Extremely similar to an Italian movie featuring a different finale.
Review of The Dinner
