dizzygothica

Why, why, why, when producers decide a book is good enough to make a film, do they then change it all? And especially why do they take English stories and make them into poor American versions of the original? And, most of all, why do the authors allow it to happen? This was a good book, based in England, with British characters, and then shifting to exciting action in Australia. So, of course, they shifted the story to Canada and Germany. Ian McShane should have been a good choice for the character (whose name, of course,was changed, seemingly for no good reason, to that of a character in a totally different DF book). He is not too bad, but he is now an investigator for the British Jockey Club, instead of the book's painter of horses, a fact which was crucial to the plot of the book. Fail, fail, fail! I bought the set of 3 TV movies, and this one was so bad I don't know if I can bear to watch the other two! (which, on Googling, I find have also been altered). Grrrrrrrrrrrr!

I have just seen this movie in Australia (with English sub-titles) and thought it was great. My Bahasa Indonesia was not adequate to judge the quality of the Indonesian script, but I saw it with fluent Indonesian speakers, and they thought the movie was very good also. The acting was excellent, and the story was interesting as it showed the revolution from a more human perspective than we usually see. When it finished, everyone in the theatre was saying that they could not wait for the second film in the trilogy. I don't know what "blabberbrat" was talking about when he/she said there were no war scenes!!! Two armies running around shooting each other, people being killed all over the place, locals' houses being burnt, trucks being blown up and so on.....what was that if not war? That's what war in the jungle is like, apparently, not the glamourised rubbish that comes out of Hollywood. Bring on the second movie, I'm dying to see what happens to Amir and his wife (she still hasn't told him about the baby!), Tomas & Senja (hmm.....do I see a romance coming?)& will Marius turn out to be a good human being in the end? And will we learn what Dayan is all about? Oh, and yes, Indonesia will become a republic (I know the ending there!).