Given his post-"Titanic" heartthrob status, it's easy to forget Leonardo DiCaprio has usually been an actor who likes to work close to the edge. "Titanic" and "The Man in the Iron Mask" seem almost out-of-character for the man who previously starred in such dark works as "The Basketball Diaries," "This Boy's Life" and "Total Eclipse." While "The Beach" returns DiCaprio to the dangerous ground on which he's given his best performances, the film itself turns out to be much like its hero Richard: good-looking, slightly cryptic and ultimately more than a little tiresome.
The fault lies not with DiCaprio, who does as much as he can to make Richard intriguing, or with director Danny Boyle, who brings to "The Beach" a few splashes of the audacity that marked his breakthrough films "Shallow Grave" and "Trainspotting," as well as his 1997 wash-out "A Life Less Ordinary." Instead, the problems with the picture stem from the script by John Hodge, adapted from the Alex Garland novel of the same name. It's all set-up and no pay-off, a problem that also hobbled Hodge's "A Life Less Ordinary."
"The Beach" does, however, offer oodles of magnificent scenery and, in its first half, a great wish-fulfillment premise. Richard, an American in Thailand, comes into possession of a crudely drawn map of a secret island where, supposedly, the pot is plentiful and the people peaceful. With a couple of French tourists in tow, Richard journeys to this private paradise and finds it more than lives up to its billing. Sure, there are a few machine gun-toting farmers and a couple of bloodthirsty sharks on hand to occasionally harsh everyone's mellow, but every home has its drawbacks.
There's also a secretive leader of this bohemian cult named Sal (Tilda Swinton of "Orlando"), who will eventually cause friction between Richard and his new love Francoise (Virginie Ledoyen). Sal also gets what's sure to be one of the most memorable lines of 2000: "Get some sleep. I may wish to have sex again before we eat breakfast."
Exactly how the downfall of the beach club comes about is awkwardly written and getting the plot on track into the third act requires Richard to do some astounding stupid things which all but eliminate any interest we have in him. Hodge clearly wants to turn this daydream into "Apocalypse Now" (Richard even sees a few clips of the Francis Ford Coppola epic during his stay in Bangkok), with a little bit of "The Deer Hunter" tossed in for good measure. Unfortunately, the swing from the movie's daydreamy first two-thirds into its nightmarish finale doesn't exactly work.
What most viewers will probably take away from "The Beach" is memories of all that gorgeous water, in every conceivable shade of blue, and cinematographer Darius Khondji's striking images of DiCaprio, who is photographed by candlelight, in the glow of an iMac screen and even against the eerie radiance of "disturbed plankton shrimp." As in all his films, Boyle has doused the soundtrack in alluring techno and electropop, with themes by Underworld and All Saints combining harmoniously with the surging score by Angelo Badalamenti ("Twin Peaks"). It's obvious though that Boyle and Hodge intended the audience to go home with much more on their minds than postcard-pretty scenery and terrific music. James Sanford
By : James Sanford
Source: rec.art.movies.reviews newsgroup
Rating: 3
Danny Boyle says he was "keen to distance this movie from LORD OF THE FLIES, which THE BEACH has been unfairly compared to." Okay, so THE BEACH is not LORD OF THE FLIES. LORD OF THE FLIES has a lot more going for it.
Many a confused moviegoer has already asked me what the heck this film is about, since the trailer makes it out to be something akin to, er, LORD OF THE FLIES. The movie, based on the novel by Alex Garland, traces the Thailand trip of young Richard (DiCaprio), who in Bangkok encounters a crazy guy named Daffy (Carlyle, who has nary an understandable line of dialogue in the whole movie).
Daffy ends up offing himself, but not before teasing Richard with a map to a remote Thai island, where the perfect beach can be found. So, with two French acquaintances (Francoise and Etienne - Ledoyen and Canet, respectively) from his Bangkok hotel, they manage to trek to the remote paradise.
Turns out the beach really is there. A band of expatriates from around the world (led by Swinton) live there, in fact, and they have an uneasy peace with the local pot farmers across the island, who carry some big guns and a lot of chest-beating anger and paranoia. The arrival of the trio turns out to be good and bad -- but mostly bad.
Writer-director-producer team Hodge-Boyle-Macdonald have put together two of the best films of the last decade (SHALLOW GRAVE and TRAINSPOTTING), and the limbo bar for THE BEACH is set incredibly high. Unfortunately, it doesn't live up to their legacy, for a number of reasons.
TITANIC fans expecting their dashing Leo are going to be sorely disappointed. In THE BEACH, DiCaprio practically plays a parody of himself, haughty and aloof, but underneath a coward and a habitual liar. The rest of the cast can safely be shrugged off, with much-vaunted newcomer Virginie Ledoyen leaving virtually no memorable impression.
More than ever before, Boyle relies on camera trickery to tell the story. The problem is that, unlike in TRAINSPOTTING, where camera tricks were used to get in the head of a heroin fiend, THE BEACH uses them to mask defects in the script, which rambles on for 90 minutes without much direction, before diverging into THE DEER HUNTER territory, with Leo going inexplicably primal. Even Boyle's kitschy life-as-video-game trick has been done before, in Spike Lee's CLOCKERS.
By film's end, the troubled shrugs of our audience would seem to agree with me that no one really knows what to make of THE BEACH. It will likely appeal to moviegoers more interested in scenery than substance -- just don't expect BEACH BLANKET BINGO. This is APOCALYPSE NOW: The Prequel.
