DOLORES CLAIBORNE
A film review by Ben Hoffman
Copyright 1995 Ben Hoffman
Looking for a suspenseful thriller with psychological overtones? You will find it all here in this adaptation from a Stephen King best-selling novel. Screenwriter Tony Gilroy took Dolores Claiborne's long monologue in the book and changed it for the film by replacing some of it with an adult character only referred to in the book, the daughter, Selena St. George (Jennifer Jason Leigh).
Dolores Claiborne (Kathy Bates) has been charged with the murder of a rich society matron, Vera Donovan, (Judy Parfitt) for whom she worked and, as everyone knew, she hated. Detective John Mackey (Christopher Plummer) is determined to get a guilty verdict against Mrs, Claiborne who once before was accused of murder. That time it was her abusive husband (David Strathairn) but she got off "not guilty" that time. Now, Mackey thinks he has several sure-fire motives for the killing of Mrs. Donovan and he will nail her. There is, however, much more Mackey (and the audience) cannot guess while the film moves back and forth, revealing hidden events.
Kathy Bates turns in a first class performance. No surprise there although she has to age some twenty years during the film. Jennifer Jason Leigh, as the daughter who has been estranged from her mother since the father's death, is induced to come home and face her own hidden past. Ms. Leigh, with no surprise here, either, is also excellent. Between Bates and Leigh, the film brings real life to the tragedy and mystery. Both should be Oscar contenders.
Directed by Taylor Hackford.
3 Bytes 4 Bytes = Superb 3 Bytes = Too good to be missed. 2 Bytes = So so. 1 Byte = Save your money.
Ben Hoffman
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews