StunnaKrypto Self-important, over-dramatic, uninspired.

Smartorhypo Highly Overrated But Still Good

Orla Zuniga It is interesting even when nothing much happens, which is for most of its 3-hour running time. Read full review

Jerrie It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

Robert J. Maxwell It's not easy to transpose Kafka to the screen. And he was, unexpectedly, a damned hard read in German class too. I dare anyone to make a movie about a man being refused entrance through a gate that was built solely for him to enter. What I mean is, much of what goes on depends on trivial, humdrum matters that are slightly cockeyed. Okay, a man turns into a giant dung beetle. What do I do now, Ma? In this very good adaptation of "The Trial" -- better than Orson Welles' and Anthony Perkins' -- that note of things being off kilter is effectively captured. The production has an oneiristic quality in which we are Kyle MacLachlen, the only person who plays it straight, indignant at being arrested by a couple of clowns who won't identify themselves or tell him what the charge against him is. But instead of taking MacLachlan to "the Depot", they let him spend the day working at his job in the bank, then return to his apartment at night.He asks his landlady, Juliet Stevenson in a peerless performance, to be his "advisor" since he needs someone to help him face whatever trouble he's supposed to be in. She smiles coyly, looks away from him, and acts thoroughly distracted -- exactly as figures do in a dream when you're trying to get their attention. It's not that easy to paint everyday interaction that preposterous without going overboard. Luis Bunuel managed it in one dream sequence in "Los Olvidados" when a mother turns to her child with a great big grin and offers him a slab of raw, dripping meat. And a production team seemed to fall into it almost by accident in the cheap horror movie, "Carnival of Souls." Portentous things happen. Strangers want to take you away for no reason. People in other rooms are listening to you. The air reeks with paranoia. The very air you breathe is ominous. If Kafka were alive today, he could write the same novel, slipping only the clothes and furnishings out of Prague in the 1920s.Nobody can claim the movie sticks closely to Kafka's novel. It's all chopped up into inchoate bits and pieces, like MacLachlan at the finish. Beautiful, buxom women keep throwing themselves at MacLachlan's feet and begging him, "Kiss me. Make love to me." This happens to me all the time but I don't recall its happening to Joseph K.A bit of gratuitous nudity might have helped because in its second act the movie runs headlong into a problem often encountered by absurd stories. If anything can happen, how can you build a dramatic structure out of it? What carries the viewer along? Certainly it's not Joseph K's character. He's no wimp, so it's hard to feel he's being humiliated. He's defiant, demanding, and insulting, not an inconvenient dung beetle. The movie begins with his arrest and ends with his pointless execution. I can't remember his ever asking what he's being charged with. He talks to several people along the way but they respond with gibberish.That doesn't detract from the performances, which are just fine on everyone's part. Two cameos stand out. Jason Robards is a frail but sprightly lawyer. Anthony Hopkins appears in one scene as the prison chaplain who relates the parable of the man waiting forever before the gate of "the law." Hopkins is simply magnetic. Nobody else could have told that simple, paradoxical tale so grippingly.

lgarretti049 The original Orson Welles film "The Trial" is a brilliant dark and brooding masterpiece with some of the greatest cinematography of all time.This film is the exact opposite.Joseph K. awakes one morning, to find two strange men in his room, telling him he has been arrested. Joseph is not told what he is charged with, and despite being "arrested," is allowed to remain free and go to work. But despite the strange nature of his arrest, Joseph soon learns that his trial, however odd, is very real, and tries desperately to spare himself from the court's judgement. Shot by a director whose total experience was in TV, this remake comes across as lame made-for-TV rip off of the Welles original.Give this a miss and check out the 1962 classic instead.

Armand Beautiful film, subtle exploration of Kafka's masterpiece nuances, slices of novel's atmosphere but only an ordinary adaptation.In fact, a film about one of Franz Kafka's texts are an Utopian gesture. The sense of pages, the shadows of characters, the angst, fear or illusions, the magnificent style of one of best writers are crushed by vision of any director or art of actor. And the images are pieces of cold beauty without soul or honesty.For "The Trial" adaptation is always present a trap: the image of Joseph K. as avatar of Kafka. Franz Kafka is only a Kakania's citizen, civil servant in a large empire, with small ambitions and desires, toy of his doubts and hesitations, dreads and lures.Kyle MacLachlan is a correct interpret of character but, the fundamental error is the ambition to be a perfect Joseph K.. So, his acting is barren and empty.Alfred Molina as Titorelli is charming but the interpretation of character is exercise of one type incarnation, the same in many nuances. Same situation for great Jason Robards.The important virtue of film is the presence of Anthony Hopkins and the colors, shadows, illusions and accents gives to parable. It is not example of brilliant art but the science of words sense description. The words- medusa, words- ash, words- sand, words- velvet. In this small text is the crux of novel and film.A splendid film, a acceptable adaptation.

robinatorjj I only wish I had seen this one before the great, claustrophobic masterpiece by Orson Welles. A very good adaptation, and very true to Kafka's story. Some of the issues of human rights seem very fresh in the wake of heightened security stemming from 9/11. Good movie for a dark, lonely night.