Vicenarian Richard travels to Thailand and finds himself in possession of a strange map. Rumours state that it leads to a solitary beach paradise, a tropical bliss. Excited and intrigued, he sets out to find it.
A young man in a small Midwestern town struggles to care for his mentally-disabled younger brother and morbidly obese mother while attempting to pursue his own happiness.
Director:
Lasse Hallström
Stars:
Johnny Depp,
Leonardo DiCaprio,
Juliette Lewis
A CIA agent on the ground in Jordan hunts down a powerful terrorist leader while being caught between the unclear intentions of his American supervisors and Jordan Intelligence.
Director:
Ridley Scott
Stars:
Leonardo DiCaprio,
Russell Crowe,
Mark Strong
A young couple living in a Connecticut suburb during the mid-1950s struggle to come to terms with their personal problems while trying to raise their two children.
Director:
Sam Mendes
Stars:
Leonardo DiCaprio,
Kate Winslet,
Christopher Fitzgerald
The story about the relationship between a rebellious 1950s teenager and his abusive stepfather, based on the memoirs of writer and literature Professor Tobias Wolff.
Director:
Michael Caton-Jones
Stars:
Robert De Niro,
Leonardo DiCaprio,
Ellen Barkin
Garland's novel centers on a young nicotine-addicted traveler named Richard, an avid pop-culture buff with a particular love for video games and Vietnam War movies. While at a hotel in Bangkok, he finds a map left by his strange, whacked-out neighbor, who just committed suicide. The map supposedly leads to a legendary island paradise where some other wayward souls have settled.Written by
Mike Arndt <clayton@hooked.net>
Tilda Swinton's character, Sylvester (Sal) is also an homage to the Looney Tunes character. See more »
Goofs
When the guys jump off the waterfall, Ettienne is wearing shoes, but in the water shot he is wearing fins. See more »
Quotes
[first lines]
Richard:
My name is Richard. So what else do you need to know? Stuff about my family, or where I'm from? None of that matters. Not once you cross the ocean and cut yourself loose, looking for something more beautiful, something more exciting and yes, I admit, something more dangerous. So after eighteen hours in the back of an airplane, three dumb movies, two plastic meals, six beers and absolutely no sleep, I finally touch down; in Bangkok.
See more »
Alternate Versions
This film had some differences from the novel that wasn't seen in the film:
Richard's obsession with war and video games is explained a bit more in the novel.
Keaty is not obsessed with his Game Boy in the film.
Richard never sleeps with Françoise despite having feelings for her, which he thinks are reciprocated, saying that he considers Étienne a good guy and would not want to do that to him.
Richard never sleeps with Sal, nor is it Sal who accompanies him to the mainland for supplies, but rather a character called Jed (who patrols the island's perimeter) who does not appear in the film. In the book, Jed is the person who leads Richard, Etienne, and Françoise to the community, not Keaty.
Ella (who works for Unhygienix), Jean (the leader of the gardening detail), Cassie (who works for Bugs), Jesse (who works in the gardening detail), Moshe (the head of the second fishing detail), and the two unnamed Yugoslavian girls (who work for Moshe) do not appear in the film.
The part where Keaty catches a dead squid that gives some of the island's inhabitants food poisoning is not in the film.
Karl escaping from the island in the beach community's main boat was not in the film.
The ending is different from the book's, which had Richard, Françoise, Étienne, Keaty, and Jed attempting to escape from the now crumbling community. In the book's epilogue after their successful escape, they move into their respective lives. Richard loses touch with Étienne and Françoise yet finds it hard to be totally freed of the effects of his experiences in that "parallel universe."
Richard never received an e-mail from Françoise with a picture after their farewell.
Voices
Written by Stephen Spencer, Paul Geoffrey Spencer and Scott Rosser
Performed by Dario G featuring Vanessa Quinones
Courtesy of Warner Music UK, Ltd/Reprise Records/Kinetic
By Arrangement with Warner Special Products See more »
User Reviews
Pretty good, despite all the bad reviews I've read
I went to this one, knowing that it could be crap, but hey, I do not care what others think and once again this way of thinking did not prove me wrong.
This flick is basically about a young twenty who goes away on a trip to Thailand by himself, because he wants to forget his past. There he meets a loony (Robert Carlyle) who gives him a map to a secret paradise. He asks two strangers, Françoise (Virginie Ledoyen who was really great in her first big American Film and good looking too by the way) and Etienne (Guillaume Canet) to come and join them.
After they have found the island they meet an alternative group who lives there and they join them, but after a while problems evolve and a minor 'hell' breaks loose.
This is the plain story-line of the movie, but there is so much more to it, it has a message and that really is what fascinated me a lot in the beginning and at the end. There was a good story there, but the way it was brought over, never really losing the actual message out of sight. Now believe me the direction, the soundtrack and the cast are good. There also is a bit gore, but it fits good in the movie and is not unnecessary.
Yet this film is not flawless, it was good entertainment over all, yes and it was very good in the beginning and in the end, but in the middle when Richard (Leonardo DiCaprio) loses it, so does the film and that is a shame. It is just too weird, too long and too incomprehensible (in the sense that the viewer himself doesn't know if it is real or not). It could have been so much better, but I guess it had to be.
NO MUST SEE BUT DEFINATELY WORTH A TRIP TO THE VIDEOSTORE OR TO THE CINEMA AT A DISCOUNT!!!!!!!!
7 out of 10
P.S. Don't agree?????, sue me!!!!!!!!!!! or mail me (see above)
142 of 209 people found this review helpful.
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I went to this one, knowing that it could be crap, but hey, I do not care what others think and once again this way of thinking did not prove me wrong.
This flick is basically about a young twenty who goes away on a trip to Thailand by himself, because he wants to forget his past. There he meets a loony (Robert Carlyle) who gives him a map to a secret paradise. He asks two strangers, Françoise (Virginie Ledoyen who was really great in her first big American Film and good looking too by the way) and Etienne (Guillaume Canet) to come and join them.
After they have found the island they meet an alternative group who lives there and they join them, but after a while problems evolve and a minor 'hell' breaks loose.
This is the plain story-line of the movie, but there is so much more to it, it has a message and that really is what fascinated me a lot in the beginning and at the end. There was a good story there, but the way it was brought over, never really losing the actual message out of sight. Now believe me the direction, the soundtrack and the cast are good. There also is a bit gore, but it fits good in the movie and is not unnecessary.
Yet this film is not flawless, it was good entertainment over all, yes and it was very good in the beginning and in the end, but in the middle when Richard (Leonardo DiCaprio) loses it, so does the film and that is a shame. It is just too weird, too long and too incomprehensible (in the sense that the viewer himself doesn't know if it is real or not). It could have been so much better, but I guess it had to be.
NO MUST SEE BUT DEFINATELY WORTH A TRIP TO THE VIDEOSTORE OR TO THE CINEMA AT A DISCOUNT!!!!!!!!
7 out of 10
P.S. Don't agree?????, sue me!!!!!!!!!!! or mail me (see above)