Fahrenheit 451

Subject line says it all, if you want an updated Fahrenheit 451, watch Equilibrium, and for true context, watch the original adaptation from 1966, as both are superior to this silly mess. I won't even go into the reasons why this film is bad, it just is, and other reviews have touched on many points why. Both films I cite above are far more entertaining and insightful, as this film has absolutely nothing to say.

I found Francois Truffaut's film version of Fahrenheit 451 hard going, not helped by a distant performance from star Oskar Werner.

Ramin Bahrani reimagines the Ray Bradbury novel. He sets it in an era of fake news, fake history, disinformation. Propaganda at its best. Burn books and you can reinvent an alternative timeline.

Set in a future Dystopia, Guy Montag (Michael P Jordan) and his mentor Captain Beatty (Michael Shannon) are firemen after a second civil war America who burn books, a tradition that goes far back as Benjamin Franklin! It is easier to control people if they could not find information and think for themselves. It was easy to keep people happy if they do not get offended from what they read.

Montag carries out his work diligently and is in line for promotion but gets taken in by the Eels, a counter group who preserve the information contained in books. They learn books by heart, the upload it on the net, they rebel against the government.

Shannon can play the villain in his sleep. Jordan has the harder part but he is rather vacuous, maybe he is meant to be that way, a person who has never learned to think or question for himself.

There are some good ideas in this film but they never hang together or are fully realised. With two failed adaptations, I think Bradbury's novel might come across better on the page than on the screen.

...or blasphemy. or a too big mistake. and , after its end, the only question remains why Fahrenheit 451 must be the victim of an adaptation who use it only as pretext. because it is a bad MTV style movie. flames, few lines from books, flat performances ( for his Montag, Michael B. Jordan deserves Golden Raspberry Award) and Michael Shannon is refuged in the skin of military bad guy, using each clichee. short, a massacre of a masterpiece. chaotic, lost in incoherence, without any meaning , proposing no story and proof of the hate against books of director. because it has every piece for create a decent work. but , except the desire to propose few fake impressive images, a lot of kitsch and stupidity, nothing else.

I'm all for creative new spins on ideas from great works, such as Ray Bradbury's F451, but just don't call it Fahrenheit 451. Another reviewer asked why so many negative reviews, well it's because when you choose to make an adaption of such a beloved book, you do the author and fans justice by sticking to the main themes of the movie and pivotal points and roles. If you want to make such a loosely based version, call it The Fireman or something. I don't want to be a huge fan of a book, get excited it's being remade, have the expectation it is going to follow the book because it's named as such, only to watch something that misses the mark. This was disappointing.

Though it was strong in a couple moments, for the most part I was disappointed with this, it really could ave been so much better, especially considering the immense resources of HBO. It goes back and forth between completely ridiculous to somewhat interesting. Unfortunately it is also a pale imitation to the novel its based on, only using the bare skeleton of the story, and not delving into what truly made the novel profound. Michael B. Jordan's character was so completely ridiculous and different than the novel version in the first 15 minutes that I nearly stopped watching it, but thankfully that subsides. There were many things from the book I expected to see, only to piss me off when they were either not there at all, or altered in some way for no justifiable reason. So while many of the basic plot points are there, tough some of them changed, it just didn't possess what the book did.

I did like Michael Shannon's character and his acting, and while Jordan's character is completely off-putting, it does get tolerable as the film goes on. There were a couple of meaningful discussions, but the essential meaning of the book burning is completely missed, it was to create a people void of free thought, and while that is hinted at, for the most part its nowhere near as deep and introspective as the novel, its a very basic rendering of and incredibly deep story. I for the most part was disappointed, it could have been so much better, all the had to do was pay attention to the source material, and not just scan over it. Also the re-writing of many of the characters is inconceivable to me, no idea why they would do it.

Meh... I didn't like it very much.