Les Misérables Movie Review

Posted by Charmaine Blake on Dec 31st, 2012 in Adapted from a Book, Drama, Musical, New Releases, Oscar Buzz | 0 comments

Les Misérables Movie Review

Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables was given a silver screen debut on December 25th 2012. The movie showcased noted actors starting with: Anne Hathaway (Fantine), Hugh Jackman (Jean Valjean), Russell Crowe (Inspector Javert), Samantha Barks (Eponine), Amanda Seyfried (Cosette) and Helena Bonham Carter (Madame Thenardier). Les Misérables is directed by Tom Hooper who is known for the Academy Award winning film: The King’s Speech. Les Misérables is one of the long-running musical theater productions in history and as it made its debut on the big screen, it is starting to garner tons of Oscar buzz along the way. Check out the latest movie review for Les Misérables from Roger Moore below:

“An Awe Inspiring Musical, Tom Hooper’s Les Misérables

Here it is, “Occupy Movement: The Musical,” the French musical “Les Miserables” preaching economic revolution, the downtrodden rising up against the wealthy few and a police force hellbent on defending the status quo.

Well, that and the virtues of mercy and compassion.

Tom “The King’s Speech” Hooper brings this worldwide phenomenon to the screen with its majestic music and emotional weight intact. He takes the film outdoors and gives us a raw, sometimes wrenching remembrance of how unjust, how hungry and how bloody, dirty and smelly France was in the post-Napoleonic decades that one man spends on the run from his nemesis.

Victor Hugo’s epic is about an ex-con, Jean Valjean (Hugh Jackman), hardened by decades of imprisonment, converted by one great act of kindness but pursued, doggedly, by the fanatical police inspector Javert (Russell Crowe). Valjean gains purpose and compassion, but Javert is blinded by his pursuit, a man not in search of justice – merely exploiting the letter of the law.

Valjean fails to save the pathetic and persecuted prostitute Fantine (Anne Hathaway), but resolves to provide for her daughter, the curly-locked Cosette (Isabelle Allen, and later Amanda Seyfried). And when the time comes, Valjean will put his life on the line for Cosette’s first love, the young revolutionary Marius (Eddie Redmayne).

The emotions are as big as the set-pieces, from the opening – convicts hauling a huge, battered ship into drydock, singing “Look down, look down, you’ll always be a slave, look down, look down, you’re standing in your grave,” and Javert bellowing “Do not forget me, [prisoner] 24601” to Javert – to the climax, the stirring call to survive and revolt, “One Day More.”

Hooper had the actors sing live, on set, which gives this sung-through musical a lived-in feel. He shoots much of this grey and grimy world with hand-held cameras, adding to the immediacy.

The actors acquit themselves admirably, with Jackman’s Broadway tenor rubbed rough and Crowe’s gruff baritone showing range. He kind of blows Javert’s big moment – when he realizes the injustice of his ways. But everything else about him – his military bearing, his horsemanship, screams Javert.

An emaciated Hathaway is properly heartbreaking as Fantine, Redmayne (“My Week With Marilyn”) is in fine voice and the comic relief – Sacha Baron Cohen and Helena Bonham Carter, as the corrupt innkeepers who “take care” of the young Cosette — are as adept with their big “Master of the House” number as they are the comedy.”

You can read the rest of the review at Roger’s Movie Nation

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Charmaine Blake loves movies, musical theater listening to music and taking pictures of anything that she finds interesting. She is a voracious reader and writer, and enjoys her time writing for New Movie Launches. Charmaine loves spending time with her pets and currently has a Siberian Husky, a toy poodle and a cat.