A Major Disappointment

A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

Stories, no matter how respected and illustrious, can exist beyond their origins. Charles Dickens's novel of Oliver Twist has been adapted for the screen a number of times, but rather than simply returning time and again to the source novel successive versions have taken cues from each other, gradually refining the tale over the centuries. David Lean's 1948 version invented the idea of Olvier being abducted by Bill Sykes for the rooftop finale (in the novel Oliver is safe and sound by this point). The subsequent Lionel Bart musical copied this ending, effectively making it official. It's a stark example of the power of cinema as a shaper of stories and cultural knowledge. This latest big screen offering takes that trajectory even further with a modern-style, naturalistic take on the Dickens tale.Just as Dickens's books are most often remembered for their vivid characters so do many Dickens adaptations succeed or fail on the strength of their cast. With this version, I'm quite impressed by Barney Clarke in the title role. Clarke is not a stupefyingly good actor, but in him we at last have an Oliver who is not completely meek and frail, and has a believable amount of fight in him. Ben Kingsley's is certainly the best dramatic Fagin ever, and really the only high quality acting job in the movie. But some of the best moments come from the obvious rapport between the supporting players. There are some moments that seem so perfectly to capture something very familiar and immediate yet also appropriately Dickensian, as when Fagin's boys remove Oliver's fine clothes - they sound just like a normal bunch of teenagers, in spite of the archaic language.But many other times, it just doesn't work, and there are some absolutely woeful bits of acting on display. Worst offender here is Jamie Forman as Bill Sykes; a wooden performance of sub-Eastenders calibre. Also, while it's nice to have a Nancy who is less a mother-substitute and more like a big sister, Leanne Rowe is just not that good. And though the realism of the performances can sometimes conjure up something wonderfully natural and fluid, it can just as easily produce the irritating drone of Jeremy Swift's Mr Bumble.It seems that many of the cast members, good or bad, were chosen for their appropriate physical appearance than anything else. This is not surprising, since Polanski his crafted a rich and thriving world for them to inhabit, as if he was creating a photographic illustration more than a movie. Pawel Edelman's cinematography captures the detail and texture of a Gustav Doré print. The setting does not dampen Polanski's trademark visual style, with lots of tight, grim-looking compositions. A neat example is when Oliver is hauled before the workhouse governors, and the handful of seated men are arranged to create a surreal kind of tunnel. The 19th century squalor seems stiflingly close to the viewer.But perhaps the most significant thing about this edition of Dickens's story is its manipulation of the story. Screenwriter Ronald Harwood has excised the subplot of Oliver being related to Mr Brownlow, a daft construction that stretched the bounds of probability and confirmed the class prejudice Dickens held at that time. This adaptation also emphasises Oliver's final confrontation with Fagin, a powerful and moving coda and a very mature thing to include. A lot of other minor diversions have been stripped away to give a very direct and efficient retelling. But this tinkering with the text is also the movie's downfall. In simplifying the story, just a few too many corners have been cut. Key characters like Bill Sykes are introduced without ceremony. There's also not enough time to build up a convincing relationship between Oliver and Brownlow. This version of Oliver Twist may look sumptuous and have many flashes of brilliance, but as a whole it is a rather cold, drab experience.

If Roman Polanski proves one thing with this, his 2005 adaptation of Dickens' Oliver Twist, it's that the lasting allure of such a text plus abiding charm of said tale is very much still apparent and that such a story can still be told, years later, in an engaging and exciting manner. It is done so here by one of our more exciting European auteurs from recent years; in addition, the man highlighting that the tale can still be told, and is still rather serviceable as a thriller in these contemporary times of thrills and spills greatly differing to what was perceived as serviceable drama in the days of Dickens. Where easy to sneer, Polanski's retelling of the story is done so with such verve and such energy; a text brought to life with such confidence and desire to do it justice, that it is difficult not to genuinely get excited by it. Additionally, within the film lies a Victorian English world brought to life with such authenticity and burning desire, peppered by a real air of disenchantment and tragedy throughout, that it is difficult not to become so totally involved with the film's protagonist every step of the way.Life begins as being rather tough for young Oliver Twist, here in this incarnation played by English born child-actor Barney Clark. He is marched across fields and through urbanised areas to an orphanage, that sense of travel and being dragged from one place and over large stretches of land to another prominent. His escort takes him through the entrance gates upon arrival, very little said or indeed communicated between guard and gentleman; the general sense being that this sort of thing is somewhat prominent in its regularity and foreshadows the strong probability that comes with someone of Twist's drifting ilk being able to link up with other kids of this sort. Young Oliver is farmed about at this stage in life; he is on the verge of being shipped out like some kind of animal to a gentleman chimney sweep it is briefly established treats those whom effectively serve him rather badly in the physical beating of his mule, before being reigned back in again by those in charge of selling on the boy via Twist's tearful pleas, encapsulating the bedraggled and uncertain times rife therein his life.Where Twist will eventually end up is that of London, but he will get there by way of a home doubling up as that of a coffin sales enterprise, the young son of Oliver's age a bit of a brute and going some way to unleashing one of Twist's more unforgiving characteristics when a stray insult aimed at one of the titular character's parents leads to a violent confrontation. In this locale of business and more moral walks of earning a keep, Twist struggles and is backed into a proverbial corner; something in a starker contrast to that of later meetings with a certain Fagin, played deliciously by Sir Ben Kingsley, and his troupe of young ruffians; strays and pick-pockets contributing to his small empire of crime and striving. Twist must escape from this home rather than be turned loose, his ambling to London coming about out of a fleeting, chance encounter with that of the era's equivalent to a signpost. His journey is fraught with the further establishment he is totally out of his depth - the Capital locale itself is granted an aura before even having appeared on screen, when, a middle aged woman whom has briefly taken Oliver in out of pity, exclaims, in a highly distinct manner, after it is revealed to her that Twist is to troop on toward London.Arriving in London, and being somewhat overwhelmed at the sorts of activity suddenly on show after such vast and open countryside-set sequences, Twist's descent into the city gets leerier and dirtier the more he systematically wades on in following a further chance encounter with another boy nicknamed The Artful Dodger (Eden). This child is one of Fagin's aforementioned cocky cockney hoodlums, and he leads Twist into their realm whilst acting as the bridge into a whole new underworld carefully constructed to a hierarchical beat which eventually leads to confrontation with the rather ferocious Bill Sikes (Foreman). Sikes is a character more inclined towards gangsterism and crimes that with them carry greater risk – the careful and precise outlining of a pistol's dangers and threat so effective, that when a character is later shot and injured the desired transcending onto the audience of perceived pain and anguish is thoroughly completed. Throughout, Twist shares an easier trust with that of Fagin; an early instance in which he spies a secret trove of Fagin's rarefied belongings and more expensive trinkets arriving with it an overbearing sense of understanding.Polanski's bringing to life of this text, in doing so combining the nastiest and greyest of locales in which to set the story arriving in tow with what is a crisp and really rather sharp execution seeing the content bounce off of the screen in spite of the imagery. Oliver Twist is an exciting and beautifully constructed film, the director spinning the tale out in a consistently involving manner; manoeuvring Twist around the city and involving him in the continuously involving, continuously unpredictable misadventures that he ends up on in a really efficient manner and forcing the film to more often than not closely resemble some of his best work.

The movie turned out to be a disappointment for us. We watched it on television on Christmas' eve.Our main issue is the poor character development. The cast is done well, but the characters our not well introduced. Some parts are to slow and a bit boring. The story does not go smooth. At some time it got a bit irritating, it was difficult to stick to watching. I wanted to go to the toilet, but I did not needed to, which is normally the case when I watch good movies. We think we too much relied on the well known story and that disappointed it us.The set design makes a bit up. Greating the feeling of early nineteenth-century England / London is greatly done.In short, I advise you to stick to the Dickens novel.

Charles Dickens' imagination, wrote George Orwell, "overwhelms everything like a kind of weed", and it's true that his works translate to the screen extremely well for that reason. Whether or not you also agree with Orwell that Dickens' characters "start off as magic lantern slides and they end up by getting mixed up in a third-rate movie" is a matter for personal taste - though only the grouchiest critic would brand Polanski's take on this family favourite anything like a massive let-down. What Dickens is best at, of course, is story - and here, Polanski delivers; there's also a sense he's aiming for the definitive version - more knockabout than David Lean's, darker than Carol Reed's. However, like those cinematic predecessors it's necessarily rendered in shorthand and distilled to the prime components: orphans, beadles, pickpockets, prostitutes and kindly benefactors. It looks great, or at least 'Dickensian', as screenwriter Ronald Harwood says: "not the historical sociological truth - that's boring", and Polanski's London is a hyperreal dystopian theme park where everyone seems to be spilling out of taverns in mid-fistfight. Kingsley's practically unrecognisable as Fagin, while Oliver (Clark) isn't half as soppy as forebear Mark Lester, even sporting a bit of an Estuary twang. Bur Foreman as Bill Sikes is no Oliver Reed - whose own portrayal still has the capacity to turn children's matinees into panicked paddling pools. Also, the mind hiccups at crucial plot points: it's Lionel Bart's glorious songs we most associate with Oliver, and tellingly, this version feels strangely hollower for their exclusion.