Among Giants (1998)

reviewed by
Akiva Gottlieb


Among Giants **1/2
rated R
starring Pete Postlethwaite, Rachel Griffiths, James Thornton
written by Simon Beaufoy
directed by Sam Miller

When Fox Searchlight Pictures picked up Sam Miller's AMONG GIANTS, they were probably hoping to once again cash in on the golden touch of Academy Award nominated British screenwriter Simon Beaufoy, who, with THE FULL MONTY, gave the small indie company it's first megahit. What they knew, but didn't care to realize, was that Beaufoy wrote the AMONG GIANTS script before he wrote THE FULL MONTY. So instead of a sequel to the hilarious antics of the latter, we get a weak romance, held together only by exceptional performances by the two leads, Pete Postlethwaite and Academy Award nominee Rachel Griffiths, showing that her vital, restrained work in HILARY AND JACKIE was no fluke.

The 50ish Postlethwaite plays Ray, a divorced man who is currently painting power lines for money. In the working class town of Sheffield, the main attraction is mountain climbing, which is how he meets Gerry(Griffiths), a hitchiker who wants to see if the climbing is really as good as advertised. The audience never learns a thing about Gerry's past, which makes her character somewhat two-dimensional. Anyway, the boyish Gerry ends up joining Ray's painting crew, and the camera pans back into some beautiful shots of the crew working on the power lines, high above the rest of the world. >From then on, there isn't much plot except for the inevitable accident, and we just have to sit back and let the romance between Ray and Gerry happen. By just looking at the two, you can already deem the romance unconventional. But there never is much going on, and Postlethwaite is always believable no matter what his age, so the movie basically moves along, though flimsily.

The only thing ironic about AMONG GIANTS is how the film is so weak, but we cease to notice it because of the simple gestures of the two lead actors. This is essentially Postlethwaite's film, and he gives a quietly moving performance as the man who is vulnerable to love, but Griffiths more than holds her own as the woman who just doesn't want to commit to anything. It's also quite odd that the man who wrote this film is the same man who wrote THE FULL MONTY, because I can't find too many similarities except for some full frontal nudity. AMONG GIANTS is not a bad film, but good intentions can only get you so far.

review by Akiva Gottlieb, The Teenage Movie Critic akiva@excite.com http://www.angelfire.com/mo/film watch me on TBS' "Dinner And A Movie" May 21 8:05pm EST


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